Of the cities in ancient Judah, Lachish was second in importance only to Jerusalem.[1] One of the Lachish letters warns of the impending Babylonian destruction, it reads: "Let my lord know that we are watching over the beacon of Lachish, according to the signals which my lord gave, for Azekah is not seen." According to the prophet Jeremiah, Lachish and Azekah were the last two Judean cities before the conquest of Jerusalem (Jer. 34:7). This pottery inscription can be seen at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.[2]

Judean captives being led away into slavery by the Assyrians after the siege of Lachish in 701 B.C. This relief is important for the knowledge of Judean dress.

Occupation at the site of Lachish began during the Pottery Neolithic period (5500–4500 BCE). Major development began in the Early Bronze Age (3300–3000 BCE),[1] during the Middle Bronze II (2000–1650 BCE), the Canaanite settlement came under strong Egyptian influence. The next peak was the late Late Bronze Age (1650–1200 BCE), when Lachish is mentioned in the Amarna letters, this phase of the city was destroyed in a fire ca. 1150 BCE. The city, under protection of the New Kingdom of Egypt, was rebuilt by the Caananites. One of the two discovered temples was built at the northwest corner of the mound, outside the city limits and within the disused moat, which led the archaeologists to call it the Fosse Temple. However, this settlement was soon destroyed by another fire, perhaps from an invasion by the Sea Peoples or Israelites, the mound was abandoned for two centuries.[1]

Rebuilding of the city began in the Early Iron Age during the 10th and 9th centuries BCE when it was settled by the Israelites, the unfortified settlement may have been destroyed c. 925 BCE by Egyptian Pharaoh Sheshonk I.[1] In the first half of the 9th century BCE, under the kings Asa and Jehoshaphat, Lachish became an important city in the kingdom of Judah, it was heavily fortified with massive walls and ramparts and a royal palace was built on a platform in the center of the city.[1] Lachish was the foremost among several fortified cities and strongholds guarding the valleys that lead up to Jerusalem and the interior of the country against enemies which usually approached from the coast.

The single inscription which identifies the location depicted in the reliefs reads: "Sennacherib, the mighty king, king of the country of Assyria, sitting on the throne of judgment, before (or at the entrance of) the city of Lachish (Lakhisha). I give permission for its slaughter"

In 701 BCE, during the revolt of king Hezekiah against Assyria, it was besieged and captured by Sennacherib despite the defenders' determined resistance.[3] Some scholars believe that the fall of Lachish actually occurred during a second campaign in the area by Sennacherib ca. 688 BCE.[citation needed] The site now contains the only remains of an Assyrian siege ramp discovered so far. Sennacherib later devoted a whole room in his "Palace without a rival", the South-west palace in Nineveh, for artistic representations of the siege on large alabaster slabs, most of which are now on display in the British Museum. They hold depictions of Assyrian siege ramps, battering rams, sappers, and other siege machines and army units, along with Lachish's architecture and its final surrender; in combination with the archaeological finds, they give a good understanding of siege warfare of the period.[4] So much attention was given to the success at Lachish also because, unlike it, Jerusalem managed to withstand Sennacherib's onslaught.

The town was rebuilt in the late 7th century BCE during the decline of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. However, the city fell to Nebuchadnezzar in his campaign against Judah in 586 BCE.

Modern excavation of the site has revealed that the Assyrians built a stone and dirt ramp up to the level of the Lachish city wall, thereby allowing the soldiers to charge up the ramp and storm the city. Excavations revealed approximately 1,500 skulls in one of the caves near the site, and hundreds of arrowheads on the ramp and at the top of the city wall, indicating the ferocity of the battle, the city occupied an area of 8 hectares (20 acres) and was finally destroyed in 587 BCE.[5] Residents were exiled as part of the Babylonian captivity.[1]

During Babylonian occupation, a large residence was built on the platform that had once supported the Israeli palace, at the end of the captivity, some exiled Jews returned to Lachish and built a new city with fortifications. Under the Babylonian or Achaemenid Empire, a large altar (known as the Solar Shrine) on the east section of the mound was built, the shrine was abandoned after the area fell in the hands of Alexander the Great. The tell has been unoccupied since then.[1]

Lachish is mentioned in several books in the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Joshua refers to Lachish in chapter 10 (verses 3, 5, 23, and 31-35), describing the Israelite conquest of Caanan. Japhia, the King of Lachish, is listed as one of the Five Amorite Kings that allied to repel the invasion, after a surprise attack from the Israelites, the kings took refuge in a cave, where they were captured and put to death. Joshua and the Israelites then took the city of Lachish after a two-day siege, exterminating the populace; in 12:11, the King of Lachish is mentioned as one of the thirty-one kings conquered by Joshua. The city is assigned to the Tribe of Judah in 15:39 as part of the western foothills.

The Book of Micah (1:13) warns the residents of Lachish that the destruction of Samaria by the Assyrians will soon spread to Judah. II Kings 18:14 mentions the Siege of Lachish; Hezekiah sends a message there offering tribute to Sennacherib in exchange for the city. In verse 17, the Assyrians leave Lachish and head to Jerusalem to begin the unsuccessful Assyrian Siege of Jerusalem, this is also mentioned in II Chronicles 32:9 and Isaiah 36:2. The Israelites learn of the departure of the Assyrians from Lachish in II Kings 19:8 and Isaiah 37:8.

The Book of Jeremiah (34:7) lists Lachish as one of the last three fortified cities in Judah to fall to the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II; in the Book of Nehemiah (11:30) Lachish is mentioned as an area where the people of Judah settled during the time of the Achaemenid Empire.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Lachish was identified with Tell el-Hesi from a cuneiform tablet found there (EA 333), the tablet is a letter from an Egyptian official named Paapu, reporting cases of treachery involving a local kinglet, Zimredda. However this hypothesis is no longer accepted,[6] the Starkey-Tufnell expedition identified Tell ed-Duweir as Lachish.

The first expedition at Lachish, then Tell ed-Duweir, from 1932 to 1939, was the Starkey-Tufnell[7] British expedition which included James Leslie Starkey as expedition leader, Olga Tufnell, G.L. Harding and C. Inge,[8] it was funded by Charles Marston and Henry Wellcome with the aim of finding the Biblical city of Lachish.[9] They succeeded in finding Lachish, with a "wealth of well-stratified pottery", a "key part of the ceramic corpus of Palestine",[8] and the Lachish Letters, c. "written to the commander of the garrison at Lachish shortly before it fell to the Babylonians in either 589 or 586 B.C."[8] Starkey was murdered in 1938 while traveling to Jerusalem to open the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum. Tufnell, Harding and Inge remained for the 1938-9 season. Tufnell returned to London and over the next two decades, worked at the Institute of Archaeology in London, "sorting, collating, studying and presenting the material found at Lacshish, she completed her final publication Lachish IV in 1957. She became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1951.[10][11][7][12][13]

The second was an Israeli expedition directed by Yohanan Aharoni that took place over two seasons in 1966 and 1968,[7] the dig, which focused mainly on the "Solar Shrine", was worked on behalf of Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University.[1] Aharoni published the findings in his 1975 publication, Investigations at Lachish: The sanctuary and the residency.[14]

In 2014, during the Fourth Expedition to Lachish, a small potsherd with letters from a 12th century BCE alphabet, was found in the ruins of a Late Bronze Age temple. One researcher called it, a “once in a generation” find.[20][21]

The Korean Lachish Excavation Team led by Hong Soon-hwa, reported that they had "uncovered a wide range of 10th century BC items, from houses with earthenware items and cooking stoves, to animal bones, olive seeds, spearheads, fortress walls and other objects" on July 5, 2017.[22][23]

An expedition found indications of Hezekiah's position against idolatry.[24]

The first archaeological expedition, the Starkey-Starkey-Tufnell (1932-9) uncovered the Lachish letters, which were "written to the commander of the garrison at Lachish shortly before it fell to the Babylonians in either 589 or 586 B.C."[8] The Hebrew letters were written on pieces of pottery, so-called ostraca. Eighteen letters were found in 1935 and three more in 1938, all written in Paleo-Hebrew script, they were from the latest occupational level immediately before the Chaldean siege of 587 BC. At the time, they formed the only known corpus of documents in classical Hebrew that had come down to us outside of the Hebrew Bible.[25][26]

Another major contribution to Biblical archaeology from excavations at Lachish are the LMLK seals, which were stamped on the handles of a particular form of ancient storage jar. More of these artifacts were found at this site (over 400; Ussishkin, 2004, pp. 2151–9) than any other place in Israel (Jerusalem remains in second place with more than 300). Most of them were collected from the surface during Starkey's excavations, but others were found in Level 1 (Persian and Greek era), Level 2 (period preceding Babylonian conquest by Nebuchadnezzar), and Level 3 (period preceding Assyrian conquest by Sennacherib). It is thanks to the work of David Ussishkin's team that eight of these stamped jars were restored, thereby demonstrating lack of relevance between the jar volumes (which deviated as much as 5 gallons or 12 litres), and also proving their relation to the reign of Biblical king Hezekiah.[27] Ussishkin observed that "The renewed excavations confirmed Tufnell’s suggestion that Level III had been destroyed in 701 BCE. All the royal storage jars, stamped and unstamped alike, date to the reign of Hezekiah, to shortly before the Assyrian conquest.'[28]

The 1898 Reference by Bliss, contains numerous drawings, including examples of Phoenician, etc. pottery, and items from pharaonic Egypt, and other Mediterranean, and inland regions.

^Ussishkin, David (1977). "The Destruction of Lachish by Sennacherib and the Dating of the Royal Judean Storage Jars". Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University. Tel Aviv. 4: 28–60. doi:10.1179/033443577788497777.

Bliss, Frederick. Numerous artifact drawings, also "Layer by Layer" drawings ofTell el-Hesy. Also an original attempt of the only el Amarna letter found at site, Amarna Letters, EA 333. A Mound of Many Cities; or Tell El Hesy Excavated, by Frederick Jones Bliss, PhD., explorer to the Fund, 2nd Edition, Revised. (The Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund.) c 1898.

Grena, G.M. (2004). LMLK--A Mystery Belonging to the King vol. 1. Redondo Beach, California: 4000 Years of Writing History. ISBN0-9748786-0-X.

1.
Southern District (Israel)
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The Southern District is one of Israels six administrative districts, and is the largest in terms of land area as well as the most sparsely populated. It covers most of the Negev desert, as well as the Arava valley, the population of the Southern District is 1,086,240 and its area is 14,185 km2. It is 79. 66% Jewish and 12. 72% Arab and 7. 62% Others, the district capital is Beersheba, while the largest city is Ashdod. Beershebas dormitory towns of Omer, Meitar, and Lehavim are all relatively affluent, while the development towns, some villages do not fall under the jurisdiction of a regional council. These include, Mahane Yatir Umm al-Hiran List of cities in Israel Arab localities in Israel Gaza Strip

2.
Israel
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Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Middle East, on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea. The country contains geographically diverse features within its small area. Israels economy and technology center is Tel Aviv, while its seat of government and proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, in 1947, the United Nations adopted a Partition Plan for Mandatory Palestine recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem. The plan was accepted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine, next year, the Jewish Agency declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. Israel has since fought several wars with neighboring Arab states, in the course of which it has occupied territories including the West Bank, Golan Heights and it extended its laws to the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, but not the West Bank. Israels occupation of the Palestinian territories is the worlds longest military occupation in modern times, efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have not resulted in peace. However, peace treaties between Israel and both Egypt and Jordan have successfully been signed, the population of Israel, as defined by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, was estimated in 2017 to be 8,671,100 people. It is the worlds only Jewish-majority state, with 74. 8% being designated as Jewish, the countrys second largest group of citizens are Arabs, at 20. 8%. The great majority of Israeli Arabs are Sunni Muslims, including significant numbers of semi-settled Negev Bedouins, other minorities include Arameans, Armenians, Assyrians, Black Hebrew Israelites, Circassians, Maronites and Samaritans. Israel also hosts a significant population of foreign workers and asylum seekers from Africa and Asia, including illegal migrants from Sudan, Eritrea. In its Basic Laws, Israel defines itself as a Jewish, Israel is a representative democracy with a parliamentary system, proportional representation and universal suffrage. The prime minister is head of government and the Knesset is the legislature, Israel is a developed country and an OECD member, with the 35th-largest economy in the world by nominal gross domestic product as of 2016. The country benefits from a skilled workforce and is among the most educated countries in the world with one of the highest percentage of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree. The country has the highest standard of living in the Middle East and the third highest in Asia, in the early weeks of independence, the government chose the term Israeli to denote a citizen of Israel, with the formal announcement made by Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Sharett. The names Land of Israel and Children of Israel have historically used to refer to the biblical Kingdom of Israel. The name Israel in these phrases refers to the patriarch Jacob who, jacobs twelve sons became the ancestors of the Israelites, also known as the Twelve Tribes of Israel or Children of Israel. The earliest known artifact to mention the word Israel as a collective is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt. The area is known as the Holy Land, being holy for all Abrahamic religions including Judaism, Christianity, Islam

3.
Shfela
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The Shfela, or Shephelah, is a transitional region of soft-sloping hills in south-central Israel stretching over 10–15 km between the Judean Mountains and the Coastal Plain. Today the Shfela is largely rural with many farms, the Bible assigned land in the Shephelah to the tribes of Judah and Dan. The Shfela is mentioned many times in the Hebrew Bible The Shfela was the site of many biblical battles, during the Bar Kokhba revolt, hollowed out hills were connected to form elaborate bunker systems for the combat with the Romans. The Shephelah consists of rolling hills. Topographically it represents the transition from the higher and more rugged Jerusalem and Hebron Mountains, whose foothills it forms, and the Coastal Plain. In the upper part the valleys descending from the Judean Mountains are deeper, where they reach the Shephelah, the rivers can flow over substantial distances along the border between the mountains and the hills, forming longitudinal valleys. Passage between the east-west and north-south valleys has dictated the communication routes throughout history, typical to the Shephelah are the Senonian-Eocene chalky formations. Apart from using the rock, they also utilised the generated underground hollows for different purposes. One of the characteristics are hills formed of marl-covered soft chalk, as opposed to the Judean Hills which are made of hard chalk. The valleys and lower areas contain soil with a high sand content, seasonal swamps can develop during the rainy season. The southern part is made up of loess, while north of Ashkelon consists of clay, the Shfela has a temperate Mediterranean to semi-arid climate. A series of east-west valleys cuts the Shfelah into districts, from north to south, they are, the Valley of Ayalon, Sorek Valley, Valley of Elah, Guvrin Valley, Valley of Lachish, and Valley of Adorayim. The biblical towns established there guarded settlements of the interior and took advantage of passing along this route. Ayalon was the access corridor to Jerusalem along the ascent of Horon. Caves are a feature of the southern part of the Shfela. Archaeological surveys in the Shfela have found evidence of habitation during the Late Bronze period, the Shephelah was a border region between the Iron Age Kingdom of Judah and the Philistines. During the decline and ultimate destruction of Judah by the Assyrians and Babylonians, the Shepehelah flourished during the Hellenistic period, was strongly affected by the First Jewish-Roman War and was largely depopulated of Jews as a result of the Bar Kochba revolt. It flourished again in the Byzantine period and was the scene of one of the battles during the Muslim Arab conquest of the 7th century

4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation

5.
Siege of Lachish
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The siege of Lachish is the name given to the Assyrian siege and conquest of the town of Lachish in 701 BC. After defeating the rebels of Ekron in Philistia he set out to subjugate Judah and in his way to Jerusalem he came across Lachish, the battlefield was the walled city of Lachish, situated on a hill. The northern part of the hill is steeper than the southern side, on top of the fact that the hill as of itself is quite high, the wall further makes the city hard to breach. Inside the city there was a castle with significant walls. The Assyrian Army was the most effective force of its time and was divided mostly into three different categories, Infantry, which included both close-combat troops using spears, and archers, there were also hired mercenaries throwing stones. The infantry was trained and worked alongside military engineers in order to breach sieges. Chariots, which were not used as much in sieges as in land engagements. The Jewish military force was insignificant compared to the professional and massive Assyrian army and mostly included local militias, there were barely any cavalrymen and chariots in the Jewish army which mostly included infantry, either for close combat or long range combat, they were also significantly less organized. Due to the steepness of the side of Lachish the Assyrian Army attacked from the south. The Jewish defenders threw stones and shot arrows at the advancing Assyrians, meanwhile the Assyrian military engineers built a ramp to the east of the main gate where Assyrian and Jewish troops began engaging in close combat. The city was captured by the Assyrians, its inhabitants led into captivity, the town was abandoned, but resettled after the return from Babylonia. Assyrian reliefs portraying the siege of Lachish clearly show battering rams attacking the vulnerable parts of the city, the British Museum has a superb set of relief carvings which depicted the siege in some detail. It shows the Assyrian soldiers firing arrows, and slingstones, the attackers shelter behind wicker shields, and deploy battering rams. The walls and towers of Lachish are shown crowded with defenders shooting arrows, throwing rocks, the reliefs continues showing the looting of the city, and defenders are shown being thrown over the ramparts, impaled, having their throats cut and asking for mercy. A birds eye plan of the city is shown with house interiors shown in section, after he captured the second most important city in Judah, Sennacherib encamped there and then sent his Rabshakeh to capture Jerusalem. The Siege of Lachish is the subject of a song by mediterranean metal band Melechesh

6.
Yosef Garfinkel
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Yosef Garfinkel is a professor of Prehistoric Archaeology and of Archaeology of the Biblical Period at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Yosef Garfinkel was born in 1956 in Haifa, Israel and he is a curator of the museum of Yarmukian Culture at Kibbutz Shaar HaGolan. Garfinkel specializes in the Protohistoric era of the Near East, the period of time when the world’s earliest village communities were established and he has excavated numerous Neolithic and Chalcolithic sites, including Gesher, Yiftahel, Neolithic Ashkelon, Shaar HaGolan, Tel ‘Ali and Tel Tsaf. Garfinkel is the author of 12 books and over 100 articles on ancient architecture, farming, water sources, pottery, art, religion, in 2007, he began conducting excavations at the fortified city of Khirbet Qeiyafa. This site is dated to the early 10th century BC, the period of the biblical King David, in the 2008 season an inscription was discovered written in ink on a pottery shard in a script which is probably Early Alphabetic/Proto Phoenician. This might be the earliest Hebrew inscription ever found, although the language of the inscription is still under debate. He is currently digging at Tel Lachish in search of Iron Age fortifications, Tel Lachish Khirbet Qeiyafa Tel Tsaf,2004,2006 Shaar HaGolan Yiftahel Neolithic Ashkelon Gesher Y. The Pottery Assemblages of Shaar HaGolan and Rabah Stages from Munhata, human and Animal Figurines of Munhata, Israel. Neolithic and Chalcolithic Pottery of the Southern Levant, Jerusalem, Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University. Dance at the Dawn of Agriculture, excavations at a Neolithic Site in Israel. Gesher, A Pre-Pottery Neolithic A Site in the Central Jordan Valley, the Early Middle Bronze Cemetery of Gesher. Boston, American Schools of Oriental Research, Jerusalem, Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University. Prof. Yosef Garfinkel Homepage Prize Find, Oldest Hebrew Inscription Biblical Archaeology Review

7.
Hebrew language
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Hebrew is a language native to Israel, spoken by over 9 million people worldwide, of whom over 5 million are in Israel. Historically, it is regarded as the language of the Israelites and their ancestors, the earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date from the 10th century BCE. Hebrew belongs to the West Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, Hebrew is the only living Canaanite language left, and the only truly successful example of a revived dead language. Hebrew had ceased to be a spoken language somewhere between 200 and 400 CE, declining since the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Aramaic and to a lesser extent Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among elites and it survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, intra-Jewish commerce, and poetry. Then, in the 19th century, it was revived as a spoken and literary language, and, according to Ethnologue, had become, as of 1998, the language of 5 million people worldwide. After Israel, the United States has the second largest Hebrew-speaking population, with 220,000 fluent speakers, Modern Hebrew is one of the two official languages of the State of Israel, while premodern Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world today. Ancient Hebrew is also the tongue of the Samaritans, while modern Hebrew or Arabic is their vernacular. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Leshon Hakodesh, the modern word Hebrew is derived from the word Ivri, one of several names for the Israelite people. It is traditionally understood to be a based on the name of Abrahams ancestor, Eber. This name is based upon the root ʕ-b-r meaning to cross over. Interpretations of the term ʕibrim link it to this verb, cross over, in the Bible, the Hebrew language is called Yәhudit because Judah was the surviving kingdom at the time of the quotation. In Isaiah 19,18 it is called the Language of Canaan, Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of languages. In turn, the Canaanite languages are a branch of the Northwest Semitic family of languages, according to Avraham ben-Yosef, Hebrew flourished as a spoken language in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah during about 1200 to 586 BCE. Scholars debate the degree to which Hebrew was a vernacular in ancient times following the Babylonian exile. In July 2008 Israeli archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel discovered a ceramic shard at Khirbet Qeiyafa which he claimed may be the earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, dating around 3000 years ago. The Gezer calendar also dates back to the 10th century BCE at the beginning of the Monarchic Period, classified as Archaic Biblical Hebrew, the calendar presents a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that through the Greeks, the Gezer calendar is written without any vowels, and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places where later Hebrew spelling requires it

8.
Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population

9.
Ancient Near East
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The ancient Near East is studied in the fields of Near Eastern archaeology and ancient history. The ancient Near East is considered one of the cradles of civilization and it also saw the creation of the first writing system and law codes, early advances that laid the foundations of astronomy and mathematics, and the invention of the wheel. During the period, states became increasingly large, until by the end the region was controlled by military empires who had conquered a number of different cultures. The phrase ancient Near East utilizes the 19th-century distinction between Near East and Far East as global regions of interest to the British Empire, the distinction began during the Crimean War. The two theatres were described by the statesmen and advisors of the British Empire as the Near East, shortly, they were to share the stage with Middle East, which came to prevail in the 20th century and continues in modern times. Meanwhile, ancient Near East had become distinct, the Near East ruled by the Ottoman Empire ranged from Vienna to the north to the tip of the Arabian Peninsula to the south, from Egypt in the west to the borders of Iraq in the east. The 19th-century archaeologists added Iran to their definition, which was never under the Ottomans, but they excluded all of Europe and, generally, Egypt, which had parts in the empire. Ancient Near East periodization is the attempt to categorize or divide time into discrete named blocks, or eras, the result is a descriptive abstraction that provides a useful handle on Near East periods of time with relatively stable characteristics. Named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia. It was followed by the Sumerian civilization, the late Uruk period saw the gradual emergence of the cuneiform script and corresponds to the Early Bronze Age. Sumer, located in southern Mesopotamia, is the earliest known civilization in the world, the Akkadian Empire, founded by Sargon the Great, lasted from the 24th to the 21st century BC, and was regarded by many as the worlds first Empire. The Akkadians eventually fragmented into Assyria and Babylonia, Ancient Elam lay to the east of Sumer and Akkad, in the far west and southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of Khuzestan and Ilam Province. In the Old Elamite period, c.3200 BC, it consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered on Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered on Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Elam was absorbed into the Assyrian Empire in the 9th to 7th centuries BC, however, the Proto-Elamite civilization existed from c.3200 BC to 2700 BC, when Susa, the later capital of the Elamites, began to receive influence from the cultures of the Iranian plateau. In archaeological terms, this corresponds to the late Banesh period and this civilization is recognized as the oldest in Iran and was largely contemporary with its neighbour, the Sumerian civilization. The Proto-Elamite script is an Early Bronze Age writing system briefly in use for the ancient Elamite language before the introduction of Elamite Cuneiform, the Amorites were a nomadic Semitic people who occupied the country west of the Euphrates from the second half of the 3rd millennium BC. In the earliest Sumerian sources, beginning about 2400 BC, the land of the Amorites is associated with the West, including Syria and Canaan and they ultimately settled in Mesopotamia, ruling Isin, Larsa, and later Babylon. Assyria, after enduring a period of Mitanni domination, emerged as a great power from the accession of Ashur-uballit I in 1365 BC to the death of Tiglath-Pileser I in 1076 BC

10.
National parks and nature reserves of Israel
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National parks of Israel are declared historic sites or nature reserves, which are mostly operated and maintained by the National Nature and Parks Authority. As of 2005, Israel maintains more than 150 nature reserves that protect 2,500 species of wild plants,20 species of fish,400 species of birds and 70 species of mammals. Some parks are located at sites such as Tel Megiddo, Beit Shean, Ashkelon. Others, such as the Alexander stream, Mount Carmel National Park or Hurshat Tal focus on nature, several parks and nature reserves have camping options, such as tent grounds and bungalows, open to small groups and individual campers. Some of them are located in the Golan Heights and the West Bank, in 2011, the most popular national parks were Yarkon National Park, Caesarea, Ein Gedi and Tel Dan. During the 19th century, the region had a population of between 275,000 and 475,000. Waves of immigration expanded local population needs, forests were cut down to supply coal for heating, industry and the Turkish railway. The German Templers brought with them shotguns, quickly adopted by local peasants for hunting wildlife, the First World War was characterized by massive acquisition of firearms, and German officers were very active hunters. By the early 20th century, hunting threatened the extinction of crocodile, Arabian ostrich, roe deer, fallow deer, Syrian brown bear, and onager. The Asiatic lion had been extinct in Palestine since around the Crusader period in the 10-13th centuries, Asiatic cheetah was last observed in 1959 and the Rabian leopard is currently acutely threatened by extinction. As a result, the British Mandatory government passed laws aimed at saving the local flora, in 1924 a Hunting Act was published and in 1926 a Forest Ordinance were published. Many sites, such as the forests of Mount Carmel and Mount Meron, were declared forest reserves, in 1953 the Knesset passed the Wildlife Protection Law and the Minister of Agriculture was appointed for its implementation. In 1955, the department for the improvement of the landscape was established in the Israeli Prime Ministers Office. The department established a number of national parks, such as Gan HaShlosha, Caesarea, Shivta. Following the ecologically disastrous drying of Lake Hula and the public pressure, the Hula Reserve was established in 1964. In 1963 the Knesset approved the National parks and nature reserves act, as a result, two authorities were established, the National Parks Authority and the Nature Reserves Authority. In 1998 the two authorities were merged into one body - Israel Nature and Parks Authority, in Israel the distinction between national parks and nature reserves is often hard to make. National parks are in most cases centered around archaeological sites, the nature reserves often contain not just protected fauna and flora, but also major archaeological sites

11.
Amarna letters
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The letters were found in Upper Egypt at Amarna, the modern name for the ancient Egyptian capital of Akhetaten, founded by pharaoh Akhenaten during the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt. The Amarna letters are unusual in Egyptological research, because they are written in Akkadian cuneiform. The written correspondence spans a period of at most thirty years, the Amarna letters are of great significance for biblical studies as well as Semitic linguistics, since they shed light on the culture and language of the Canaanite peoples in pre-biblical times. These Canaanisms provide valuable insights into the proto-stage of those languages several centuries prior to their first actual manifestation and they had originally been stored in an ancient building that archaeologists have since called the Bureau of Correspondence of Pharaoh. Once the location where they were found was determined, the ruins were explored for more, the first archaeologist who successfully recovered more tablets was Flinders Petrie, who in 1891 and 1892 uncovered 21 fragments. Émile Chassinat, then director of the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology in Cairo, since Knudtzons edition, some 24 more tablets, or fragments, have been found, either in Egypt, or identified in the collections of various museums. The initial group of letters recovered by local Egyptians have been scattered among museums in Germany, England, Egypt, France, Russia, the archive contains a wealth of information about cultures, kingdoms, events and individuals in a period from which few written sources survive. It includes correspondence from Akhenatens reign, as well as his predecessor Amenhotep IIIs reign, the tablets consist of over 300 diplomatic letters, the remainder comprise miscellaneous literary and educational materials. These tablets shed light on Egyptian relations with Babylonia, Assyria, Syria, Canaan, and Alashiya as well as relations with the Mitanni. The letters have been important in establishing both the history and the chronology of the period, letters from the Babylonian king, Kadashman-Enlil I, anchor the timeframe of Akhenatens reign to the mid-14th century BC. Specifically, the letters include requests for help in the north against Hittite invaders. Note, Many assignments are tentative, spellings vary widely, william L. The Amarna archive, it is now generally agreed, spans at most about thirty years, perhaps only fifteen or so. Moran notes that scholars believe one tablet, EA16. However, this speculation appears improbable because the Amarna archives were closed by Year 2 of Tutankhamun, a small number of the Amarna letters are in the class of poetry. EA153, entitled, Ships on hold, from Abimilku of Tyre is a short, lines 6-8, and 9-11 are parallel phrases, each ending with. before the troops of the king, my lord. -. Both sentences are identical, and repetitive, with only the subject statement changing, the entire corpus of Amarna letters has many standard phrases. It also has some phrases, and quotations used only once, some are parables, A bird in a cage —Rib-Hadda subcorpus of letters. A brick may move from under its partner, still I will not move from under the feet of the king, my lord. —Used in letters EA266,292, EA292 by Adda-danu of Gazru

12.
Amarna letter EA 287
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The scribe of his six letters to Egypt were penned by the Jerusalem scribe, EA287 is a moderately long, and involved letter. The Amarna letters, about 300, numbered up to EA382, are a mid 14th century BC, about 1350 BC and 20–25 years later, correspondence. The initial corpus of letters were found at Akhenatens city Akhetaten, in the floor of the Bureau of Correspondence of Pharaoh, others were later found, letter EA287, is numbered VAT1644, from the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin. EA287, letter three of six, Obverse, --g, m lord, the ent affair.1, s into, let them come with service.10 May the king provide for them, of the land might be in dire straits11 on their account. Bottom, obverse, 38-40, Reverse, --May the king inquire about the12 much food, much oil, much clothing until Pauru, gone13 is Addaya together with the garrison of soldiers the king vided. May the king know Addaya id to me, segue, --old, he has dismissed me.14 Do not abandon it, send this a garrison, and send right here15 the commissioner of the king. --I sent s16 to the king, my lord, prisoners,5000.178 porters18 for the caravans of the k, may the king, my lord, know I am unable to send a caravan to the king, my lord. Segue, --As the king has placed his name in Jerusalem forever, he cannot abandon it—the land of Jerusalem.19 --Say to the scribe of the king, my lord, Message of Abdi-Heba, your servant. Present eloquent words to the king, my lord, I am a soldier of the king, I am always yours.20 --And please make the Kašites responsible for the evil deed.21 I was almost killed by the Kašites n my own house. May the king in the regard,7 times and 7 times my the king, my lord, for me.22 The Akkadian language text, Akkadian, Obverse, --RU Bēlu-ia qabû ]-- --1. A šalāmu. Pa-Ú-Ru -maškim2 LUGAL ri— --a-na KUR-URU-Ǘ-Ru-SA10-lim-ki 13pa-ța-a-ri13— ---Da-Ya a-di LÚ-meš-ma-șar-ti LÚ-ú-e-e— --din LUGAL ri li-de4 LUGAL ri --[iq-bi a-na ia-a-ši 1, johns Hopkins University Press,1987,1992. The Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, Parpola, Simo, Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, c 1997, Tablet I thru Tablet XII, Index of Names, Sign List, and Glossary-,165 pages

13.
Gibeon (ancient city)
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Gibeon was a Canaanite city north of Jerusalem. The pre-conquest inhabitants of Gibeon, the Gibeonites, were Hivites according to Joshua 10,12 and Joshua 11,19, the remains of Gibeon are located on the south edge of the Palestinian village of Al Jib. The earliest known mention of Gibeon in a source is in a list of cities on the wall of the Amum temple at Karnak. However, the first scientific identification of al-Jib with the ancient Canaanite city of Gibeon was made by Edward Robinson in 1838, the remains of Gibeon were excavated in six expeditions from 1956 to 1962, led by the University of Pennsylvania archaeologist James B. Gibeon was founded in the Early Bronze Age, for the excavators discovered 14 EB storage jars beneath the foundations of the Iron Age wall, other EB remains were discovered at the top of the tel but the stratigraphy had been destroyed by British gunfire during the First World War. It is probable that there was a wall, but this has not yet been found. Tombs cut into the rock on the east site of the hill contained EB jars and bowls, formed first by hand, the Early Bronze city was destroyed by fire, but no date has been determined for this destruction. The remains are similar to those found elsewhere at Jericho, Lachish, in MBII, however, a substantial city with finely made pottery was found. 29 MBII tombs have found, apparently containing multiple burials. It would appear that some, at least, of these tombs had been cut during earlier periods and were being reused. During the early Iron Age, a wall was constructed around the crown of the hill. It is possible, but cannot be proven, that structure is the pool of Gibeon of 2 Samuel 2,13. Later in the Iron Age, another tunnel of 93 steps was constructed to a water source below the city starting from a point near the pool. A second access point to source from the base of the hill is still in use today. This was apparently the citys period of greatest prosperity, in the 8th and 7th century BCE there was a considerable wine industry there, cellars with room for 95,000 liters of wine have been found. Impressive among these finds are sixty-three wine cellars from the 8th to 7th century BC, pritchard published articles on their production of wine, the Hebrew inscriptions, the rock-cut wine cellars, and the well engineered water conduits that supplied the city water. From the 6th to the beginning of the 1st century BCE, during the Roman period there was considerable building, including stepped baths and water conduits. Gibeon was possibly a dependency of Jerusalem, and was not fortified at the time

14.
Book of Joshua
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The Book of Joshua is the sixth book in the Hebrew Bible and the first book of the Deuteronomistic history, the story of Israel from the conquest of Canaan to the Babylonian exile. Almost all scholars agree that the book of Joshua holds little value for early Israel. Although Rabbinic tradition holds that the book was written by Joshua, transfer of leadership to Joshua A. Joshuas instructions to the people II, entrance into and conquest of Canaan A. Entry into Canaan 1. Reconnaissance of Jericho 2, establishing a foothold at Gilgal 4. Failure and success at Ai 3, renewal of the covenant at Mount Ebal 4. Other campaigns in central Canaan 5, summary list of defeated kings III. Division of the land among the tribes A, cities of refuge and levitical cities D. Summary of conquest E. De-commissioning of the eastern tribes IV, conclusion A. Joshuas farewell address B. Methodist writer Joseph Benson suggests that Gods revelation to Joshua comes either immediately after, God commissions Joshua to take possession of the land and warns him to keep faith with the Covenant. The Israelites cross the Jordan River through the intervention of God. The conquest begins in Canaan with Jericho, followed by Ai, after which Joshua builds an altar to Yahweh at Mount Ebal, the covenant ceremony has elements of a divine land-grant ceremony, similar to ceremonies known from Mesopotamia. The narrative then switches to the south, the Gibeonites trick the Israelites into entering into an alliance with them by saying they are not Canaanites, this prevents the Israelites from exterminating them, but they are enslaved instead. An alliance of Amorite kingdoms headed by the Canaanite king of Jerusalem is defeated with Yahwehs miraculous help of stopping the sun and the moon, the enemy kings were eventually hanged on trees. With the south conquered the narrative moves to the northern campaign, a powerful multi-national coalition headed by the king of Hazor, the most important northern city, is defeated with Yahwehs help and Hazor captured and destroyed. Chapter 11, 16–23 summarises the extent of the conquest, Joshua has taken the land, almost entirely through military victories. Joshua 11,18 asserts that the conquest took a long time - the Amplified Bible, anglican churchman Charles Ellicott thinks the war seems to have lasted seven years. The land then had rest from war, the list of the 31 kings is quasi-tabular, the king of Jerusalem, one, the king of Hebron, one, the king of Jarmuth, one, the king of Lachish, one

15.
Tribe of Judah
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According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Judah was one of the twelve Tribes of Israel. According to the account in the Book of Joshua, following a partial conquest of Canaan by the Israelite tribes, Joshua allocated the land among the twelve tribes. Judahs divinely ordained portion is described in Joshua 15 as encompassing most of the portion of the Land of Israel, including the Negev. However, the consensus of scholars is that the conquest of Joshua as described in the Book of Joshua never occurred. According to the narrative in the Book of Judges, the tribe of Judah invited the tribe of Simeon to fight them in alliance to secure each of their allotted territories. As is the case with Joshua, many scholars do not believe that the book of Judges contains reliable history. In Samuels account, after the death of Saul, all the other than Judah remained loyal to the House of Saul. The Book of Kings follows the expansion and unparalleled glory of the United Monarchy under King Solomon, a majority of scholars believe that the accounts concerning David and Solomons territory in the united monarchy are exaggerated, and a minority believe that the united monarchy never existed at all. The tribes of Judah and Benjamin remained loyal to the House of David and these tribes formed the Kingdom of Judah, which existed until Judah was conquered by Babylon in c.586 BCE and the population deported. When the Jews returned from Babylonian exile, residual tribal affiliations were abandoned, bethlehem and Hebron were initially the main cities within the territory of the tribe. In biblical times, this region was subdivided into three sections – the wilderness of En Gedi, the wilderness of Judah, and the wilderness of Maon. The hill country – the elevated plateau situated between the Shephelah and the wilderness, with rocky slopes but very fertile soil and this region was used for the production of grain, olives, grapes, and other fruit, and hence produced oil and wine. According to the Torah, the tribe consisted of descendants of Judah, some Biblical scholars view this as an etiological myth created in hindsight to explain the tribes name and connect it to the other tribes in the Israelite confederation. With Leah as a matriarch, Biblical scholars regard the tribe as having been believed by the authors to have been part of the original Israelite confederation. As depicted by the Deuteronomists and post-exilic writers, the tribe of Judah was the tribe of the Kingdom of Judah. David and the line belonged to the tribe, and the line continued after the fall of the Kingdom of Judah in the Exilarchs. The traditional Jewish belief was that the Messiah would be of the Davidic line, indeed, many of the Jewish leaders and prophets of the Hebrew Bible claimed membership in the tribe of Judah. For example, the literary prophets Isaiah, Amos, Habakkuk, Joel, Micah, Obadiah, Zechariah, and Zephaniah, all belonged to the tribe

16.
Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)
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The United Monarchy is the name given to the Israelite kingdom of Israel and Judah, during the reigns of Saul, David and Solomon, as depicted in the Hebrew Bible. This is traditionally dated between 1050 and 930 BCE, modern historians are divided on the historicity of the United Monarchy as described in the Bible. There is no evidence of a united Kingdom of Judah. According to standard source criticism, a number of source texts were spliced together to produce the current books of Samuel. The most prominent in the parts of the first book are the pro-monarchical source. In identifying these two sources, two separate accounts can be reconstructed, the anti-monarchical source describes Samuel to have thoroughly routed the Philistines, yet begrudgingly accepting that the people demanded a ruler, and thus appointing Saul by cleromancy. Textual critics also point to disparities in the account of Davids rise to power as indicative of separate threads being merged later to create an age of a united monarchy. David is thought by scholars to have been a ruler in Judah while Israel, comparatively immense, modern archaeology also supports this view. Most scholars believe the Books of Samuel exhibit too many anachronisms to have been a contemporary account, for example, there is mention of later armor, use of camels, cavalry, and iron picks and axes. According to the Book of Judges, the Israelite tribes previously lived as a confederation under ad hoc charismatic leaders called Judges. Abimelech was the first to be declared king by the men of Shechem and the house of Millo, and reigned over Israel for three years before he was killed during the Battle of Thebez. The Bible treats the notion of kingship as having been an anathema at the time, it being seen as one man put in a position of reverence and power, which in their faith was reserved for God. According to the Second Book of Samuel, due to his disobedience to God, Sauls reign was curtailed, the Masoretic Text says that Saul ruled for only two years. The Bible portrays Saul as having died in battle against the Philistines, Sauls heir, Ishbaal, took over rulership of Israel but, according to Samuel, ruled for only two years before he was assassinated. David, who had become king of Judah only, ended the conspiracy, a number of textual critics and biblical scholars have suggested that David was actually responsible for the assassination, and Davids innocence was a later invention to legitimize his actions. Israel rebels, according to Samuel, and appoints Davids son Absalom as their new king, the Bible then describes Israel as taking over Judah and ultimately forcing David into exile east of the Jordan. This section of the text, and the bulk of the remainder of the Books of Samuel, is thought by textual critics to belong to a single large source known as the Court History of David. Israel and Judah are portrayed in this source as quite distinct kingdoms, eventually, according to the Book of Samuel, David launches a counter-attack, and wins, although with the loss of Absalom

17.
Jerusalem
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Jerusalem is a city located on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is considered a city in the three major Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, the part of Jerusalem called the City of David was settled in the 4th millennium BCE. In 1538, walls were built around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent, today those walls define the Old City, which has been traditionally divided into four quarters—known since the early 19th century as the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters. The Old City became a World Heritage Site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger, Modern Jerusalem has grown far beyond the Old Citys boundaries. These foundational events, straddling the dawn of the 1st millennium BCE, the sobriquet of holy city was probably attached to Jerusalem in post-exilic times. The holiness of Jerusalem in Christianity, conserved in the Septuagint which Christians adopted as their own authority, was reinforced by the New Testament account of Jesuss crucifixion there, in Sunni Islam, Jerusalem is the third-holiest city, after Mecca and Medina. As a result, despite having an area of only 0, outside the Old City stands the Garden Tomb. Today, the status of Jerusalem remains one of the issues in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, West Jerusalem was among the captured and later annexed by Israel while East Jerusalem, including the Old City, was captured. Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently annexed it into Jerusalem, one of Israels Basic Laws, the 1980 Jerusalem Law, refers to Jerusalem as the countrys undivided capital. All branches of the Israeli government are located in Jerusalem, including the Knesset, the residences of the Prime Minister and President, the international community does not recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital, and the city hosts no foreign embassies. Jerusalem is also home to some non-governmental Israeli institutions of importance, such as the Hebrew University. In 2011, Jerusalem had a population of 801,000, of which Jews comprised 497,000, Muslims 281,000, a city called Rušalim in the Execration texts of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt is widely, but not universally, identified as Jerusalem. Jerusalem is called Urušalim in the Amarna letters of Abdi-Heba, the name Jerusalem is variously etymologized to mean foundation of the god Shalem, the god Shalem was thus the original tutelary deity of the Bronze Age city. The form Yerushalem or Yerushalayim first appears in the Bible, in the Book of Joshua, according to a Midrash, the name is a combination of Yhwh Yireh and the town Shalem. The earliest extra-biblical Hebrew writing of the word Jerusalem is dated to the sixth or seventh century BCE and was discovered in Khirbet Beit Lei near Beit Guvrin in 1961. The inscription states, I am Yahweh thy God, I will accept the cities of Judah and I will redeem Jerusalem, or as other scholars suggest, the mountains of Judah belong to him, to the God of Jerusalem

18.
Lachish letters
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The Lachish Letters or Lachish Ostraka, sometimes called Hoshaiah Letters, are a series of letters written in carbon ink in Ancient Hebrew on clay ostraca. The letters were discovered at the excavations at Lachish, the ostraka were discovered by James Leslie Starkey in January–February,1935 during the third campaign of the Wellcome excavations. They were published in 1938 by Harry Torczyner and have been studied since then. Seventeen of them are located in the British Museum in London. The individual ostraca probably come from the broken clay pot and were most likely written in a short period of time. They were written to Yaush, possibly the commanding officer at Lachish, from Hoshaiah, in the letters, Hoshaiah defends himself to Yaush regarding a letter he either was or was not supposed to have read. The letters also contain informational reports and requests from Hoshaiah to his superior, the letters were probably written shortly before Lachish fell to the Babylonian army of King Nebuchadnezzar in 588/6 BC during the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah. Letter Number 2 To my lord, Yaush, may YHWH cause my lord to hear tiding of peace today, who is your servant, a dog, that my lord remembered his rvant. May YHWH make known to my d a matter of which you do not know, Letter Number 3 Your servant, Hoshayahu, sent to inform my lord, Yaush, May YHWH cause my lord to hear tidings of peace and tidings of good. And now, open the ear of your servant concerning the letter which you sent to your servant last evening because the heart of your servant is ill since your sending it to your servant, and inasmuch as my lord said Dont you know how to read a letter. As YHWH lives if anyone has ever tried to read me a letter, and as for every letter that comes to me, if I read it. And furthermore, I will grant it as nothing, and as for the letter of Tobiyahu, the servant of the king, which came to Sallum, the son of Yaddua, from the prophet, saying, Be on guard. Your sernt is sending it to my lord, notes, This ostracon is approximately fifteen centimeters tall by eleven centimeters wide and contains twenty-one lines of writing. The front side has lines one through sixteen, the side has lines seventeen through twenty-one. This ostracon is particularly interesting because of its mentions of Konyahu, who has gone down to Egypt, for possible biblical connections according to Torczyner, reference Jeremiah 26, 20-23. Letter Number 4 May YHW cause my to hear, this very day, and now, according to everything which my lord has sent, this has your servant done. I wrote on the according to everything which sent o me. And inasmuch as my lord sent to me concerning the matter of Bet Harapid, and as for Semakyahu, Semayahu took him and brought him up to the city

19.
Israel Museum
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The Israel Museum was founded in 1965 as Israels national museum. It is situated on a hill in the Givat Ram neighborhood of Jerusalem, near the Bible Lands Museum, the Knesset, the Israeli Supreme Court, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. An urn-shaped building on the grounds of the museum, the Shrine of the Book, houses the Dead Sea Scrolls and it is one of the largest museums in the region. Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek was the spirit behind the establishment of the Israel Museum, one of the leading art. Since its establishment in 1965, the Museum has built up a collection of nearly 500,000 objects, James S. Snyder, former Deputy Director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, was appointed director of the museum in 1997. From 1965, the museum was housed in a series of buildings designed by the Russian-born Israeli architect Alfred Mansfeld. A $100-million campaign to renovate the museum and double its space was completed in July 2010. The wings for archaeology, the arts, and Jewish art and life were completely rebuilt. The passageways that connect between the buildings and five new pavilions were designed by James Carpenter, the museum covers nearly 50,000 sq. meters and attracts 800,000 visitors a year, including 100,000 children who visit and attend classes in its Youth Wing. This narrative is supplemented by thematic groupings highlighting aspects of ancient Israeli archaeology that are unique to the history, among them Hebrew writing, glass. A special gallery at the entrance to the wing showcases new findings, the Shrine of the Book houses the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest biblical manuscripts in the world, as well as rare early medieval biblical manuscripts. The scrolls were discovered in 1947–56 in 11 caves in and around the Wadi Qumran, the building consists of a white dome over a building located two-thirds below the ground. The dome is reflected in a pool of water that surrounds it, across from the white dome is a black basalt wall. The interior of the shrine was designed to depict the environment in which the scrolls were found, there is also a permanent display on life in the Qumran, where the scrolls were written. The entire structure was designed to resemble a pot in which the scrolls were found, the shrine was designed by Armand Bartos and Frederick Kiesler, and was opened in 1965. As the fragility of the scrolls makes it impossible to display all on a continuous basis, after a scroll has been exhibited for 3–6 months, it is removed from its showcase and placed temporarily in a special storeroom, where it rests from exposure. The museum also holds other rare ancient manuscripts and displays the Aleppo Codex, originally constructed on the grounds of Jerusalem’s Holyland Hotel, the model, which includes a replica of Herods Temple, is now a permanent feature of the museums 20-acre campus. The Israel Museum holds a collection of paintings representing a wide range of periods, styles, subjects

20.
Neolithic
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It ended when metal tools became widespread. The Neolithic is a progression of behavioral and cultural characteristics and changes, including the use of wild and domestic crops, the beginning of the Neolithic culture is considered to be in the Levant about 10, 200–8800 BC. It developed directly from the Epipaleolithic Natufian culture in the region, whose people pioneered the use of wild cereals, which then evolved into true farming. The Natufian period was between 12,000 and 10,200 BC, and the so-called proto-Neolithic is now included in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic between 10,200 and 8800 BC. By 10, 200–8800 BC, farming communities arose in the Levant and spread to Asia Minor, North Africa, Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. Early Neolithic farming was limited to a range of plants, both wild and domesticated, which included einkorn wheat, millet and spelt, and the keeping of dogs, sheep. By about 6900–6400 BC, it included domesticated cattle and pigs, the establishment of permanently or seasonally inhabited settlements, not all of these cultural elements characteristic of the Neolithic appeared everywhere in the same order, the earliest farming societies in the Near East did not use pottery. Early Japanese societies and other East Asian cultures used pottery before developing agriculture, unlike the Paleolithic, when more than one human species existed, only one human species reached the Neolithic. The term Neolithic derives from the Greek νέος néos, new and λίθος líthos, stone, the term was invented by Sir John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system. In the Middle East, cultures identified as Neolithic began appearing in the 10th millennium BC, early development occurred in the Levant and from there spread eastwards and westwards. Neolithic cultures are attested in southeastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia by around 8000 BC. The total excavated area is more than 1,200 square yards, the Neolithic 1 period began roughly 10,000 years ago in the Levant. A temple area in southeastern Turkey at Göbekli Tepe dated around 9500 BC may be regarded as the beginning of the period. This site was developed by nomadic tribes, evidenced by the lack of permanent housing in the vicinity. At least seven stone circles, covering 25 acres, contain limestone pillars carved with animals, insects, Stone tools were used by perhaps as many as hundreds of people to create the pillars, which might have supported roofs. Other early PPNA sites dating to around 9500–9000 BC have been found in Jericho, Israel, Gilgal in the Jordan Valley, the start of Neolithic 1 overlaps the Tahunian and Heavy Neolithic periods to some degree. The major advance of Neolithic 1 was true farming, in the proto-Neolithic Natufian cultures, wild cereals were harvested, and perhaps early seed selection and re-seeding occurred. The grain was ground into flour, emmer wheat was domesticated, and animals were herded and domesticated

21.
Bronze Age
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The Bronze Age is a historical period characterized by the use of bronze, proto-writing, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact there were no tin bronzes in Western Asia before trading in bronze began in the third millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, with the Chalcolithic serving as a transition, although the Iron Age generally followed the Bronze Age, in some areas, the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic. Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing, according to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia and Egypt developed the earliest viable writing systems. The overall period is characterized by use of bronze, though the place and time of the introduction. Human-made tin bronze technology requires set production techniques, tin must be mined and smelted separately, then added to molten copper to make bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of use of metals. The dating of the foil has been disputed, the Bronze Age in the ancient Near East began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy and mathematics, the usual tripartite division into an Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age is not used. Instead, a division based on art-historical and historical characteristics is more common. The cities of the Ancient Near East housed several tens of thousands of people, ur in the Middle Bronze Age and Babylon in the Late Bronze Age similarly had large populations. The earliest mention of Babylonia appears on a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 23rd century BC, the Amorite dynasty established the city-state of Babylon in the 19th century BC. Over 100 years later, it took over the other city-states. Babylonia adopted the written Semitic Akkadian language for official use, by that time, the Sumerian language was no longer spoken, but was still in religious use. Elam was an ancient civilization located to the east of Mesopotamia, in the Old Elamite period, Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered in Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Its culture played a role in the Gutian Empire and especially during the Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it

22.
Canaan
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Canaan was a Semitic-speaking region in the Ancient Near East during the late 2nd millennium BC. The name Canaan occurs commonly in the Hebrew Bible, in particular, the references in Genesis 10 and Numbers 34 define the Land of Canaan as extending from Lebanon southward to the Brook of Egypt and eastward to the Jordan River Valley. References to Canaan in the Bible are usually backward-looking, referring to a region that had something else. The term Canaanites serves as an ethnic catch-all term covering various indigenous populations—both settled, the Amarna Letters and other cuneiform documents use Kinaḫḫu, while other sources of the Egyptian New Kingdom mention numerous military campaigns conducted in Ka-na-na. Canaan had significant geopolitical importance in the Late Bronze Age Amarna period as the area where the spheres of interest of the Egyptian, Hittite, Mitanni and Assyrian Empires converged. Much of the knowledge about Canaan stems from archaeological excavation in this area at sites such as Tel Hazor, Tel Megiddo. The English term Canaan comes from the Hebrew כנען‎, via Greek Χαναάν Khanaan and it appears as KUR ki-na-ah-na in the Amarna letters, and knʿn is found on coins from Phoenicia in the last half of the 1st millennium. It first occurs in Greek in the writings of Hecataeus as Khna, scholars connect the name Canaan with knʿn, Kanaan, the general Northwest Semitic name for this region. An early explanation derives the term from the Semitic root knʿ to be low, humble, purple cloth became a renowned Canaanite export commodity which is mentioned in Exodus. The dyes may have named after their place of origin. The purple cloth of Tyre in Phoenicia was well known far, however, according to Robert Drews, Speisers proposal has generally been abandoned. The Late Bronze Age state of Ugarit is considered quintessentially Canaanite archaeologically, Jonathan Tubb states that the term ga-na-na may provide a third millennium reference to Canaanite while at the same time stating that the first certain reference is in the 18th century BC. See Ebla-Biblical controversy for further details, Mari letters A letter from Mutu-bisir to Shamshi-Adad I of the Old Assyrian Empire has been translated, It is in Rahisum that the brigands and the Canaanites are situated. It was found in 1973 in the ruins of Mari, an Assyrian outpost at that time in Syria, additional unpublished references to Kinahnum in the Mari letters refer to the same episode. Alalakh texts A reference to Ammiya being in the land of Canaan is found on the Statue of Idrimi from Alalakh in modern Syria. After a popular uprising against his rule, Idrimi was forced into exile with his mothers relatives to seek refuge in the land of Canaan, the other references in the Alalakh texts are, AT154 AT181, A list of Apiru people with their origins. All are towns, except for Canaan AT188, A list of Muskenu people with their origins, the letters are written in the official and diplomatic East Semitic Akkadian language of Assyria and Babylonia, though Canaanitish words and idioms are also in evidence. May the king ask Yanhamu about these matters, may the king ask his commissioner, who is familiar with Canaan EA151, Letter from Abimilku to the Pharaoh, The king, my lord wrote to me, write to me what you have heard from Canaan

23.
New Kingdom of Egypt
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Radiocarbon dating places the exact beginning of the New Kingdom between 1570–1544 BC. The New Kingdom followed the Second Intermediate Period and was succeeded by the Third Intermediate Period and it was Egypt’s most prosperous time and marked the peak of its power. The later part of period, under the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties is also known as the Ramesside period. It is named after the pharaohs that took the name of Ramesses I. Egyptian armies fought Hittite armies for control of modern-day Syria, the Eighteenth Dynasty contained some of Egypts most famous Pharaohs, including Ahmose I, Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Amenhotep III, Akhenaten and Tutankhamun. Queen Hatshepsut concentrated on expanding Egypts external trade by sending an expedition to the land of Punt. Thutmose III expanded Egypts army and wielded it with success to consolidate the empire created by his predecessors. This resulted in a peak in Egypts power and wealth during the reign of Amenhotep III, during the reign of Thutmose III, Pharaoh, originally referring to the kings palace, became a form of address for the person who was king. Akhenatens religious fervor is cited as the reason why he was written out of Egyptian history. Under his reign, in the 14th century BC, Egyptian art flourished and attained a level of realism. Towards the end of the 18th Dynasty, the situation had changed radically, Ramesses II sought to recover territories in the Levant that had been held by the 18th Dynasty. His campaigns of reconquest culminated in the Battle of Kadesh, where he led Egyptian armies against those of the Hittite king Muwatalli II. Ramesses was caught in historys first recorded military ambush, although he was able to rally his troops, the outcome of the battle was undecided with both sides claiming victory at their home front, ultimately resulting in a peace treaty between the two nations. The last great pharaoh from the New Kingdom is widely considered to be Ramesses III, in the eighth year of his reign the Sea Peoples invaded Egypt by land and sea. Ramesses III defeated them in two great land and sea battles and he incorporated them as subject peoples and settled them in Southern Canaan although there is evidence that they forced their way into Canaan. Their presence in Canaan may have contributed to the formation of new states, such as Philistia and he was also compelled to fight invading Libyan tribesmen in two major campaigns in Egypts Western Delta in his sixth year and eleventh year respectively. The heavy cost of this warfare slowly drained Egypts treasury and contributed to the decline of the Egyptian Empire in Asia. Something in the air prevented much sunlight from reaching the ground, one proposed cause is the Hekla 3 eruption of the Hekla volcano in Iceland but the dating of this remains disputed

24.
Moat
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A moat is a deep, broad ditch, either dry or filled with water, that is dug and surrounds a castle, fortification, building or town, historically to provide it with a preliminary line of defence. In some places evolved into more extensive water defences, including natural or artificial lakes, dams. In older fortifications, such as hillforts, they are referred to simply as ditches. In later periods, moats or water defences may be largely ornamental and they could also act as sewerage. Some of the earliest evidence of moats has been uncovered around ancient Egyptian castles, one example is at Buhen, a castle excavated in Nubia. Other evidence of ancient moats is found in the ruins of Babylon, and in reliefs from ancient Egypt, Assyria, and other cultures in the region. Evidence of early moats around settlements has been discovered in archaeological sites throughout Southeast Asia, including Noen U-Loke, Ban Non Khrua Chut, Ban Makham Thae. The use of the moats could have been either for defensive or agriculture purposes, moats were excavated around castles and other fortifications as part of the defensive system as an obstacle immediately outside the walls. In suitable locations they might be filled with water, a moat made access to the walls difficult for siege weapons, such as siege towers and battering rams, which needed to be brought up against a wall to be effective. A water-filled moat made the practice of mining, digging tunnels under the castles in order to effect a collapse of the defences, segmented moats have one dry section and one section filled with water. Dry moats cut across the part of a spur or peninsula are called neck ditches. Moats separating different elements of a castle, such as the inner and outer wards are cross ditches, the shared derivation implies that the two features were closely related and possibly constructed at the same time. The term moat is also applied to natural formations reminiscent of the artificial structure, the walls were further protected from infantry attack by wet or dry moats, sometimes in elaborate systems. When this style of fortification was superseded by lines of forts in the mid-19th century. The Walls of Benin were a combination of ramparts and moats, called Iya and it was considered the largest man-made structure lengthwise, second only to the Great Wall of China and the largest earthwork in the world. With more recent work by Patrick Darling, it has established as the largest man-made structure in the world. It enclosed 6,500 km² of community lands and its length was over 16,000 km of earth boundaries. It was estimated that earliest construction began in 800 and continued into the mid-15th century, the walls are built of a ditch and dike structure, the ditch dug to form an inner moat with the excavated earth used to form the exterior rampart

25.
Sea Peoples
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The Sea Peoples were a purported seafaring confederation of groups known to have attacked ancient Egypt prior to the Late Bronze Age collapse. The various Sea Peoples have been proposed to have originated either from western Anatolia or from Southern Europe. French Egyptologist Emmanuel de Rougé first used the term peuples de la mer in 1855 in a description of reliefs on the Second Pylon at Medinet Habu documenting Year 8 of Ramesses III. Gaston Maspero, de Rougés successor at the Collège de France, since the early 1990s, the theory has been brought into question by a number of scholars. Hypotheses regarding the origin of the groups identified as Sea Peoples remains the source of much speculation. De Rougé later became chair of Egyptology at the Collège de France, the theory was taken up by other scholars such as Eduard Meyer, and became the generally accepted theory amongst Egyptologists and orientalists. Since the early 1990s, the theory has been brought into question by a number of scholars, the years of this long-lived pharaohs reign are not known exactly, but they must have comprised nearly all of the first half of the 13th century BCE. In his Second Year, an attack of the Sherden, or Shardana, on the Nile Delta was repulsed and defeated by Ramesses, the event is recorded on Tanis Stele II. The Sherden prisoners were incorporated into the Egyptian army for service on the Hittite frontier by Ramesses. Another stele usually cited in conjunction with one is the Aswan Stele. It is plausible to assume that the Tanis and Aswan Stelae refer to the same event, the Battle of Kadesh was the outcome of a campaign against the Hittites and allies in the Levant in the pharaohs Year 5. The imminent collision of the Egyptian and Hittite empires became obvious to both, and they both prepared campaigns against the strategic midpoint of Kadesh for the next year, Ramesses divided his Egyptian forces, which were then ambushed piecemeal by the Hittite army and nearly defeated. At home, Ramesses had his scribes formulate an official description, ten copies survive today on the temples at Abydos, Karnak, Luxor and Abu Simbel, with reliefs depicting the battle. The Poem of Pentaur, describing the battle survived also, there is no evidence of any collaboration with the Hittites or malicious intent on their part, and if Ramesses considered it, he never left any record of that consideration. The poem lists the peoples which went to Kadesh as allies of the Hittites, depredations of this confederacy had been so severe that the region was forsaken as pasturage for cattle, it was left waste from the time of the ancestors. The pharaohs action against them is attested in a narrative found in three sources. The Athribis stela is a stela found in Athribis and inscribed on both sides, which, like the Cairo column was first published by Maspero, two years later in 1883. The Merneptah Stele from Thebes describes the reign of peace resulting from the victory, the Nine Bows were acting under the leadership of the king of Libya and an associated near-concurrent revolt in Canaan involving Gaza, Ashkelon, Yenoam and the people of Israel

26.
Israelites
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The Israelites were a Semitic-speaking people of the ancient Near East, who inhabited a part of Canaan during the tribal and monarchic periods. The ancient Israelites are considered to be an outgrowth of the indigenous Canaanite populations that inhabited the Southern Levant, Syria, ancient Israel. In the period of the monarchy it was only used to refer to the inhabitants of the northern kingdom. The Israelites were also known as the Hebrews and the Twelve Tribes of Israel, the Jews are named after and also descended from the southern Israelite Kingdom of Judah, particularly the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and partially Levi. The word Jews is found in 2 Kings, Chronicles, and in passages in the Book of Jeremiah, the Book of Zechariah. The Kingdom of Israel, often called the Northern Kingdom of Israel, contained all the tribes except for the tribes of Judah, following its conquest by Assyria, these ten tribes were allegedly dispersed and lost to history, and they are henceforth known as the Ten Lost Tribes. Jewish tradition holds that Samaria was so named because the mountainous terrain was used to keep Guard for incoming enemy attacks. According to Samaritan tradition, however, the Samaritan ethnonym is not derived from the region of Samaria, thus, according to Samaritan tradition, the region was named Samaria after them, not vice versa. In Modern Hebrew, the Samaritans are called Shomronim, while in Samaritan Hebrew they call themselves Shamerim, in Judaism, an Israelite is, broadly speaking, a lay member of the Jewish ethnoreligious group, as opposed to the priestly orders of Kohanim and Levites. In texts of Jewish law such as the Mishnah and Gemara, the term יהודי, meaning Jew, is rarely used, Samaritans commonly refer to themselves and to Jews collectively as Israelites, and they describe themselves as the Israelite Samaritans. The name Israel first appears in the Hebrew Bible in Genesis 32,29, the Hebrew Bible etymologizes the name as from yisra to prevail over or to struggle/wrestle with, and el, God, the divine. The name Israel first appears in non-biblical sources c.1209 BCE, the inscription is very brief and says simply, Israel is laid waste and his seed is not. The inscription refers to a people, not to an individual or a nation-state, in modern Hebrew, bnei yisrael can denote the Jewish people at any time in history, it is typically used to emphasize Jewish religious identity. From the period of the Mishna the term Yisrael acquired a narrower meaning of Jews of legitimate birth other than Levites. In modern Hebrew this contrasts with the term Yisraeli, a citizen of the modern State of Israel, the term Hebrew has Eber as an eponymous ancestor. It is used synonymously with Israelites, or as a term for historical speakers of the Hebrew language in general. Today, Jews and Samaritans both recognize each other as communities with an authentic Israelite origin, the terms Jews and Samaritans largely replaced the title Children of Israel as the commonly used ethnonym for each respective community. The name Yahweh, the god of the later Israelites, may indicate connections with the region of Mount Seir in Edom, the Canaanites were also the first people, as far as is known, to have used an alphabet

27.
Iron Age
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The Iron Age is an archaeological era, referring to a period of time in the prehistory and protohistory of the Old World when the dominant toolmaking material was iron. It is commonly preceded by the Bronze Age in Europe and Asia with exceptions, meteoric iron has been used by humans since at least 3200 BC. Ancient iron production did not become widespread until the ability to smelt ore, remove impurities. The start of the Iron Age proper is considered by many to fall between around 1200 BC and 600 BC, depending on the region, the earliest known iron artifacts are nine small beads dated to 3200 BC, which were found in burials at Gerzeh, Lower Egypt. They have been identified as meteoric iron shaped by careful hammering, meteoric iron, a characteristic iron–nickel alloy, was used by various ancient peoples thousands of years before the Iron Age. Such iron, being in its metallic state, required no smelting of ores. Smelted iron appears sporadically in the record from the middle Bronze Age. While terrestrial iron is abundant, its high melting point of 1,538 °C placed it out of reach of common use until the end of the second millennium BC. Tins low melting point of 231, similarly, recent archaeological remains of iron working in the Ganges Valley in India have been tentatively dated to 1800 BC. By the Middle Bronze Age, increasing numbers of smelted iron objects appeared in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, African sites are turning up dates as early as 1200 BC. Modern archaeological evidence identifies the start of iron production in around 1200 BC. Between 1200 BC and 1000 BC, diffusion in the understanding of iron metallurgy and use of objects was fast. As evidence, many bronze implements were recycled into weapons during this time, more widespread use of iron led to improved steel-making technology at lower cost. Thus, even when tin became available again, iron was cheaper, stronger, and lighter, and forged iron implements superseded cast bronze tools permanently. Increasingly, the Iron Age in Europe is being seen as a part of the Bronze Age collapse in the ancient Near East, in ancient India, ancient Iran, and ancient Greece. In other regions of Europe, the Iron Age began in the 8th century BC in Central Europe, the Near Eastern Iron Age is divided into two subsections, Iron I and Iron II. Iron I illustrates both continuity and discontinuity with the previous Late Bronze Age, during the Iron Age, the best tools and weapons were made from steel, particularly alloys which were produced with a carbon content between approximately 0. 30% and 1. 2% by weight. Steel weapons and tools were nearly the same weight as those of bronze, however, steel was difficult to produce with the methods available, and alloys that were easier to make, such as wrought iron, were more common in lower-priced goods

28.
Shoshenq I
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Hedjkheperre Setepenre Shoshenq I, — also known as Sheshonk or Sheshonq I — was a pharaoh of ancient Egypt and the founder of the Twenty-second Dynasty. Of ancient Libyan ancestry, Shoshenq I was the son of Nimlot A, Great Chief of the Ma, and his wife Tentshepeh A and he is presumed to be the Shishaq mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, and his exploits are carved on the Bubastite Portal at Karnak. Bierbrier based his opinion on Biblical evidence collated by W. Albright in a BASOR130 paper, building materials would first have had to be extracted and architectural planning performed for his great monumental projects here. Such activities usually took up to a year to complete work was even begun. This would imply that Shoshenq I likely lived for a period in excess of one year after his 925 BC campaign and this possibility would also permit his 945 BC accession date to be slightly lowered to 943 BC. The editors of the 2006 book Ancient Egyptian Chronology write, The chronology of early Dyn.22 depends on dead reckoning. The sum of the highest attested regnal dates for Osorkon II, Takelot I, Osorkon I, the large Dakhla stela provides a lunar date in the form of a wrš feast in year 5 of Shoshenq, yielding 943 BC as his year 1. However, Dr. Anthony Leahy has suggested that the identification of the wrš-festival of Seth as lunar is hypothetical, thus far, however, only Dr. Kenneth Kitchen is on record as sharing the same academic view. Sheshonk I is frequently identified with the Egyptian king Shishaq, referred to in the Hebrew Bible at 1st Kings 11,40,14,25, Shoshenq I is generally attributed with the raid on Judah. This is corroborated with a stela discovered at Megiddo, Shoshenq I was the son of Nimlot A and Tentsepeh A. His paternal grandparents were the Chief of the MA Shoshenk and his wife Mehytenweskhet A, prior to his reign, Shoshenq I had been the Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Army, and chief advisor to his predecessor Psusennes II, as well as the father-in-law of Psusennes daughter Maatkare. He also held his fathers title of Great Chief of the Ma or Meshwesh, significantly, his uncle Osorkon the Elder had already served on the throne for at least six years in the preceding 21st Dynasty, hence, Shoshenq Is rise to power was not wholly unexpected. As king, Shoshenq chose his eldest son, Osorkon I, as his successor and consolidated his authority over Egypt through marriage alliances, finally, Shoshenq I designated his third son, Nimlot B, as the Leader of the Army at Herakleopolis in Middle Egypt. He pursued a foreign policy in the adjacent territories of the Middle East. There is no mention of either an attack nor tribute from Jerusalem, the fragment of a stela bearing his cartouche from Megiddo has been interpreted as a monument Shoshenq erected there to commemorate his victory. Some of these cities include ancient Israelite fortresses such as Megiddo, Taanach. There are other problems with Shoshenq being the same as the biblical Shishak and his list focuses on places either north or south of Judah, as if he did not raid the center. The fundamental problem facing historians is establishing the aims of the two accounts and linking up the information in them, there have been some possible suggestions and proposals from scholars regarding this issue

29.
Asa of Judah
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Asa was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the third king of the Kingdom of Judah and the fifth king of the House of David. He was the son of Abijam, grandson of Rehoboam, the Hebrew Bible gives the period of his reign as 41 years. His reign is dated between 913-910 BC to 873-869 BC and he was succeeded by Jehoshaphat, his son. According to Thieles chronology, when Asa became very ill, he made Jehoshaphat coregent, Asa died two years into the coregency. Asa was zealous in maintaining the traditional worship of God, and in rooting out idolatry, after concluding a battle with Zerah of Egypt in the 10th year of his reign, there was peace in Judah until the 35th year of Asas reign. In his 36th year he was confronted by Baasha, king of Israel and he formed an alliance with Ben-Hadad I, king of Aram Damascus, and using a monetary bribe, convinced him to break his peace treaty with Baasha and invade the Northern Kingdom. He died greatly honoured by his people, and was considered for the most part a righteous king and he threw the prophet Hanani in jail and oppressed some of the people the same time. It is also recorded of Asa that in his old age, when afflicted with a disease, he “sought not to the Lord. Azariah son of Oded, a wiseman and prophet, exhorted Asa to reinforce strict national observance of Judaism and he purged the land of former religious worships, all the sites of non-Judaic worship were destroyed and the nation entered into a covenant or oath together. The Queen Mother, Maacah, was deposed for having been involved with local, non-Judaic gods, worships, and beliefs. Finally, when the transition was completed in Asas fifteenth year. Taking advantage of 35 years of peace, Asa revamped and reinforced the fortresses built by his grandfather Rehoboam. According to Steven Shawn Tuell, the numbers given in this passage are completely unrealistic. The Bible does not state whether Zerah was a pharaoh or a general of the army, the Ethiopians were pursued all the way to Gerar, in the coastal plain, where they stopped out of sheer exhaustion. The resulting peace kept Judah free from Egyptian incursions until the time of Josiah, in Asas 36th year, King Baasha of Israel attacked the Kingdom of Judah. Baasha built the fortress of Ramah on the border, less than ten miles from Jerusalem, the result was that the capital was under pressure and the military situation was precarious. Asa took gold and silver from the Temple and sent them to Ben-Hadad I, king of Aram Damascus, Ben-Hadad I attacked Ijon, Dan, and many important cities of the tribe of Naphtali, and Baasha was forced to withdraw from Ramah. Asa tore down the fortress and used its raw materials to fortify Geba and Mizpah

30.
Jehoshaphat
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Jehoshaphat is a Biblical name which refers to several characters in the Hebrew Bible, The first, Jehoshaphat the Recorder, son of Ahilud, is a scribe who first appears in 2 Samuel. Jehoshaphat, son of Paruah, in Issachar, appears in 1 Kings 4,17, Jehoshaphat, son of Asa, first appears in 1 Kings 15,24 as a King of Judah. This article concerns Jehoshaphat, the King of Judah, as described in the Bible, according to 1 Kings 15,24, Jehoshaphat, son of Asa, was the fourth king of the Kingdom of Judah, and successor to his father. His children included Jehoram, who succeeded him as king, historically, his name has sometimes been connected with the Valley of Josaphat. Jehoshaphat ascended the throne at the age of thirty-five and reigned for twenty-five years and he spent the first years of his reign fortifying his kingdom against the Kingdom of Israel. His zeal in suppressing the worship of the high places is commended in 2 Chronicles 17,6. In the third year of his reign Jehoshaphat sent out priests and Levites over the land to instruct the people in the Law, Jehoshaphat also pursued alliances with the northern kingdom. Jehoshaphats son Jehoram married Ahabs daughter Athaliah, in the eighteenth year of his reign Jehosaphat visited Ahab in Samaria, and nearly lost his life accompanying his ally to the siege of Ramoth-Gilead. While Jehoshaphat safely returned from battle, he was reproached by the prophet Jehu, son of Hanani. We are told that Jehoshaphat repented, and returned to his course of opposition to all idolatry. The alliance between Israel and Judah for trade of gold with Ophir differs in the Deuteronomistic Historians account, according to the Deuteronomist, Jehoshapat refused the offer, most likely, in order to retain profits for his kingdom. He subsequently joined Jehoram of Israel, in a war against the Moabites, who were under tribute to Israel. The Moabites were subdued, but seeing Meshas act of offering his own son as a sacrifice on the walls of Kir of Moab filled Jehoshaphat with horror. According to Chronicles, the Moabites formed a great and powerful confederacy with the surrounding nations, the allied forces were encamped at Ein Gedi. The king and his people were filled with alarm, the king prayed in the court of the Temple, O our God, will you not judge them. For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us and we do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you. The voice of Jahaziel the Levite was heard announcing that the day all this great host would be overthrown. So it was, for they quarreled among themselves, and slew one another, soon after this victory Jehoshaphat died after a reign of twenty-five years at the age of sixty

31.
Kingdom of Judah
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The Kingdom of Judah was an Iron Age kingdom of the Southern Levant. The Hebrew Bible depicts it as the successor to a United Monarchy, in the 10th and early 9th centuries BCE the territory of Judah appears to have been sparsely populated, limited to small rural settlements, most of them unfortified. Significant academic debate exists around the character of the Kingdom of Judah, archaeologists of the minimalist school doubt the extent of the Kingdom of Judah as depicted in the Bible. Around 1990–2010, an important group of archaeologists and biblical scholars formed the view that the actual Kingdom of Judah bore little resemblance to the portrait of a powerful monarchy. These scholars say the kingdom was no more than a tribal entity. Other archaeologists say that the identification of Khirbet Qeiyafa as an Israelite settlement is uncertain, the status of Jerusalem in the 10th century BCE is a major subject of debate. The oldest part of Jerusalem and its urban core is the City of David. However, unique structures such as the Stepped Stone Structure and the Large Stone Structure. According to the Hebrew Bible, the kingdom of Judah resulted from the break-up of the United kingdom of Israel after the tribes refused to accept Rehoboam. At first, only the tribe of Judah remained loyal to the house of David, the two kingdoms, Judah in the south and Israel in the north, coexisted uneasily after the split until the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel by Assyria in c. 722/721. The major theme of the Hebrew Bibles narrative is the loyalty of Judah, and especially its kings, to Yahweh, which it states is the God of Israel. Accordingly, all the kings of Israel and almost all the kings of Judah were bad, which in terms of Biblical narrative means that they failed to enforce monotheism. Of the good kings, Hezekiah is noted for his efforts at stamping out idolatry, for the first sixty years, the kings of Judah tried to re-establish their authority over the northern kingdom, and there was perpetual war between them. Israel and Judah were in a state of war throughout Rehoboams seventeen-year reign, Rehoboam built elaborate defenses and strongholds, along with fortified cities. In the fifth year of Rehoboams reign, Shishak, pharaoh of Egypt, brought a huge army, in the sack of Jerusalem, Rehoboam gave them all of the treasures out of the temple as a tribute and Judah became a vassal state of Egypt. Rehoboams son and successor, Abijah of Judah continued his fathers efforts to bring Israel under his control and he fought the Battle of Mount Zemaraim against Jeroboam of Israel and was victorious with a heavy loss of life on the Israel side. The Bible does not state whether Zerah was a pharaoh or a general of the army, the Ethiopians were pursued all the way to Gerar, in the coastal plain, where they stopped out of sheer exhaustion. The resulting peace kept Judah free from Egyptian incursions until the time of Josiah some centuries later, in his 36th year, Asa was confronted by Baasha of Israel, who built a fortress at Ramah on the border, less than ten miles from Jerusalem

32.
Hezekiah
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Hezekiah was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the son of Ahaz and the 13th king of Judah. Archaeologist Edwin Thiele has concluded that his reign was between c.715 and 686 BC and he is considered a very righteous king by the author of the Book of Kings. He is also one of the most prominent kings of Judah mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and is one of the mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. Hezekiah enacted sweeping reforms, including a strict mandate for the sole worship of Yahweh. Isaiah and Micah prophesied during his reign, Hezekiah, more properly transliterated as Ḥizkiyyahu, or Ḥizkiyyah. It also spawns a number of nouns, including חוֹזֶק, חָזְקָה, חֶזְקָה‎ strength, as well as the adjectives חָזָק, חָזֵק‎ strong. Accordingly, חִזְקִיָּהוּ‎ Ḥizkiyyahu can be said to mean something like Strengthened by Yahweh, the main account of Hezekiahs reign is found in 2 Kings 18–20, Isaiah 36–39, and 2 Chronicles 29–32 of the Hebrew Bible. Proverbs 25,1 mentions that it is a collection of King Solomons proverbs that were copied by the officials of King Hezekiah of Judah and his reign is also referred to in the books of the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, and Micah. The books of Hosea and Micah record that their prophecies were made during Hezekiah’s reign, Hezekiah was the son of King Ahaz and Abijah. His mother, Abijah, was a daughter of the high priest Zechariah, based on Thieles dating, Hezekiah was born in c.741 BC. He died from natural causes at the age of 54 in c.687 BC, according to the Hebrew Bible, Hezekiah assumed the throne of Judah at the age of 25 and reigned for 29 years. Some writers have proposed that Hezekiah served as coregent with his father Ahaz for about 14 years and his sole reign is dated by William F. Albright as 715–687 BC, and by Edwin R. Thiele as 716–687 BC. Hezekiah purified and repaired the Temple, purged its idols, in an effort to abolish what he considered idolatry from his kingdom, he destroyed the high places and bronze serpent, recorded as being made by Moses, which became objects of idolatrous worship. In place of this, he centralized the worship of God at the Jerusalem Temple, Hezekiah also resumed the Passover pilgrimage and the tradition of inviting the scattered tribes of Israel to take part in a Passover festival. He sent messengers to Ephraim and Manasseh inviting them to Jerusalem for the celebration of the Passover, the messengers, however, were not only not listened to, but were even laughed at, only a few men of Asher, Manasseh, and Zebulun came to Jerusalem. Nevertheless, the Passover was celebrated with solemnity and such rejoicing as had not been in Jerusalem since the days of Solomon. Hezekiah is portrayed by the Hebrew Bible as a great and good king, when Sargon II, the king of Assyria, died in 705 BC, states, including Judah, that were subject to Assyria saw an opportunity to throw off their subservience to the Assyrian kings. Hezekiah ceased to pay the tribute imposed on his father, in 703 BC Sennacherib, Sargons son and successor, began a series of major campaigns to quash opposition to Assyrian rule

33.
Assyria
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Assyria was a major Mesopotamian East Semitic-speaking kingdom and empire of the ancient Near East and the Levant. Centered on the Tigris in Upper Mesopotamia, the Assyrians came to rule powerful empires at several times. Assyria is named after its capital, the ancient city of Aššur. In the 25th and 24th centuries BC, Assyrian kings were pastoral leaders, Assyria can also refer to the geographic region or heartland where Assyria, its empires and the Assyrian people were centered. The indigenous modern Eastern Aramaic-speaking Assyrian Christian ethnic minority in northern Iraq, north east Syria, southeast Turkey, in prehistoric times, the region that was to become known as Assyria was home to a Neanderthal culture such as has been found at the Shanidar Cave. The earliest Neolithic sites in Assyria were the Jarmo culture c.7100 BC and Tell Hassuna, during the 3rd millennium BC, a very intimate cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians and the Akkadians throughout Mesopotamia, which included widespread bilingualism. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian, and vice versa, is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a scale, to syntactic, morphological. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the third millennium BC as a sprachbund and it is highly likely that the city was named in honour of its patron Assyrian god with the same name. The city of Aššur, together with a number of other Assyrian cities, however it is likely that they were initially Sumerian-dominated administrative centres. In the late 26th century BC, Eannatum of Lagash, then the dominant Sumerian ruler in Mesopotamia, similarly, in c. the early 25th century BC, Lugal-Anne-Mundu the king of the Sumerian state of Adab lists Subartu as paying tribute to him. Of the early history of the kingdom of Assyria, little is known, in the Assyrian King List, the earliest king recorded was Tudiya. According to Georges Roux he would have lived in the mid 25th century BC, Tudiya was succeeded on the list by Adamu, the first known reference to the Semitic name Adam and then a further thirteen rulers. The earliest kings, such as Tudiya, who are recorded as kings who lived in tents, were independent semi-nomadic pastoralist rulers and these kings at some point became fully urbanised and founded the city state of Ashur in the mid 21st century BC. During the Akkadian Empire, the Assyrians, like all the Mesopotamian Semites, became subject to the dynasty of the city state of Akkad, the Akkadian Empire founded by Sargon the Great claimed to encompass the surrounding four quarters. Assyrian rulers were subject to Sargon and his successors, and the city of Ashur became an administrative center of the Empire. On those tablets, Assyrian traders in Burushanda implored the help of their ruler, Sargon the Great, the name Hatti itself even appears in later accounts of his grandson, Naram-Sin, campaigning in Anatolia. Assyrian and Akkadian traders spread the use of writing in the form of the Mesopotamian cuneiform script to Asia Minor, the Akkadian Empire was destroyed by economic decline and internal civil war, followed by attacks from barbarian Gutian people in 2154 BC. The rulers of Assyria during the period between c.2154 BC and 2112 BC once again fully independent, as the Gutians are only known to have administered southern Mesopotamia

34.
Sennacherib
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Sennacherib was the king of Assyria from 705 BCE to 681 BCE. He is principally remembered for his campaigns against Babylon and Judah. He was assassinated in obscure circumstances in 681 BCE, apparently by his eldest son, the primary preoccupation of his reign was the so-called Babylonian problem, the refusal of the Babylonians to accept Assyrian rule, culminating in his destruction of the city in 689 BCE. Further campaigns were carried out in Syria in the mountains east of Assyria, against the kingdoms of Anatolia and his death was welcomed in Babylon as divine punishment for the destruction of that city. He was also a builder, it was under him that Assyrian art reached its peak. Assyria began as a Bronze Age city-state or small kingdom on the middle-Tigris, the empires rise aroused the fear and hatred of its neighbours, notably Babylon, Elam and Egypt, and the many smaller kingdoms of the region such as Judah. Any perceived weakness on the part of Assyria led inevitably to rebellion, solving the so-called Babylonian problem was Sennacheribs primary preoccupation. Sennacheribs grandfather Tiglath-pileser III had made himself king of Babylon, creating a monarchy in which the Babylonians retained a nominal independence. This arrangement was never accepted by local leaders, particularly an important tribal chief named Marduk-apla-iddina. Marduk-apla-iddina paid tribute to Tiglath-pileser, but when Tiglath-pilesers successor Shalmaneser V was overthrown by Sargon II he seized the opportunity to crown himself king of Babylon, the next thirty years saw a repeating pattern of Assyrian reconquest and renewed rebellion. His relations, instead, were military, and culminated in his complete destruction of Babylon in 689 BCE. He destroyed the temples and the images of the gods, except for that of Marduk, the creator-god and divine patron of Babylon and this caused consternation in Assyria itself, where Babylon and its gods were held in high esteem. Sennacherib attempted to justify his actions to his own countrymen through a campaign of religious propaganda, in Babylon itself, Sennachribs answer to the Babylonian problem sparked an intense hatred that would eventually lead to a war for independence and the destruction of Assyria. Sennacherib was probably not the son of Sargon II, but he was groomed for royal succession. Sargon died in battle, and ancient sources give three different years for Sennacheribs first reign-year—705 BCE,704 BCE, and 703 BCE—suggesting that the succession was not smooth, Sennacheribs first campaign began late in 703 BCE against Marduk-apla-iddina, who had once more taken the throne of Babylon. The rebellion was defeated, Marduk-apla-iddina fled, and Babylon was taken, a puppet king named Bel-ibni was placed on the throne and for the next two years Babylon was left in peace. In 701 BCE, Sennacherib turned from Babylonia to the part of the empire. Ekron called on Egypt for help but the Egyptians were defeated, Sennacherib then turned on Jerusalem, Hezekiahs capital

35.
Nineveh
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Nineveh was an ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia, located on the outskirts of Mosul in modern-day northern Iraq. It is on the bank of the Tigris River, and was the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. It is also a name for the half of Mosul which lies on the eastern bank of the Tigris in the modern day. Its ruins are across the river from the major city of Mosul. The two main tells, or mound-ruins, within the walls are Kouyunjik, the Northern Palace, large amounts of Assyrian sculpture and other artifacts have been excavated and are now located in museums around the world. Site remains suffered in the 2010s from the occupation of the area by ISIS, Iraqi forces recaptured the area in January 2017. The English placename Nineveh comes from Latin Ninive and Septuagint Greek Nineuḗ under influence of the Biblical Hebrew Nīnewēh, the original meaning of the name is unclear but may have referred to a patron goddess. The cuneiform for Ninâ is a fish within a house and this may have simply intended Place of Fish or may have indicated a goddess associated with fish or the Tigris, possibly originally of Hurrian origin. The city was said to be devoted to the Ishtar of Nineveh. The city was known as Ninii or Ni in Ancient Egyptian, Ninuwa in Mari, Ninawa in Aramaic, ܢܸܢܘܵܐ in Syriac. Nabī Yūnus is the Arabic for Prophet Jonah, Kouyunjik was, according to Layard, a Turkish name, and it was known as Armousheeah by the Arabs, and is thought to have some connection with the Kara Koyunlu dynasty. This whole extensive space is now one immense area of ruins overlaid in parts by new suburbs of the city of Mosul, Nineveh was one of the oldest and greatest cities in antiquity. The area was settled as early as 6000 BC and, by 3000 BC, had become an important religious center for the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, the early city was constructed on a fault line and, consequently, suffered damage from a number of earthquakes. One such event destroyed the first temple of Ishtar, which was rebuilt in 2260 BC by the Akkadian king Manishtushu. Texts from the Hellenistic period later offered an eponymous Ninus as the founder of Nineveh, the regional influence of Nineveh became particularly pronounced during the archaeological period known as Ninevite 5, or Ninevite V. This period is defined primarily by the pottery that is found widely throughout northern Mesopotamia. Also, for the northern Mesopotamian region, the Early Jezirah chronology has been developed by archaeologists, according to this regional chronology, Ninevite 5 is equivalent to the Early Jezirah I–II period. Ninevite 5 was preceded by the Late Uruk period, Ninevite 5 pottery is roughly contemporary to the Early Transcaucasian culture ware, and the Jemdet Nasr ware

36.
Lachish reliefs
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The Lachish reliefs are a set of Assyrian palace reliefs narrating the story of the Assyrian victory over the kingdom of Judah during the siege of Lachish in 701 BCE. The palace room, where the relief was discovered in 1845-47, was covered with the Lachish relief and was 12 metres wide and 5.10 metres long. The Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal sequence was found in the same palace, the reliefs were discovered by the then 28-year-old Austen Henry Layard during excavations in 1845-47. Layard noted in his work that Henry Rawlinson, the Father of Assyriology, Layard and others refuted Rawlinsons identification, and the identification as the biblical Lachish prevailed. Israeli researcher Yigael Yadin showed that the images of the walls and town depicted fit exactly with the uncovered walls, the descriptions shown in the reliefs were compared with those written about Lachish in the bible and found to be similar as well. Sennacheribs conquests of Judean cities, without the capital Jerusalem, are mentioned in the Bible, the book of Kings, Book of Chronicles and in the book of Isaiah. - In his annals, Sennacherib claimed that he destroyed 46 fortified cities and towns of Judah and took 200,150 captives and he also claimed that he besieged King Hezekiah of the Judah in Jerusalem like a bird in a cage. Grabbe and other scholars consider the city pictured on the Lachish relief to be Jerusalem. They point out that since Jerusalem was not captured by the Assyrians, other authors point out that the siege of Jerusalem is not depicted on the Lachish relief because it resulted in failure and the relief was seen as a way of compensation for not conquering Jerusalem. Like a Bird in a Cage, The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 BCE, the Invasion of Sennacherib in the Book of Kings, A Source-Critical and Rhetorical Study of 2 Kings 18-19. The Quest for the Historical Israel, Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel, Invited Lectures Delivered at the Sixth Biennial Colloquium

37.
Alabaster
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Alabaster is a mineral or rock that is soft and often used for carving, as well as being processed for plaster powder. The term is used in different ways by archaeologists and the processing industry on the one hand. The first use is in a meaning, covering varieties of two different minerals, the fine-grained massive type of gypsum, as well as the fine-grained banded type of calcite. Geologists only define the gypsum variety as alabaster, chemically, gypsum is a hydrous sulfate of calcium, while calcite is a carbonate of calcium. Both types of alabaster have broadly similar properties and they are usually light-coloured, translucent and soft stones that have been used throughout human history mainly for carving decorative artifacts. Onyx-marble must be understood as a traditional, but geologically inaccurate term, in general, ancient alabaster is calcite in the wider Middle East, including Egypt and Mesopotamia, while it is gypsum in medieval Europe. Modern alabaster is calcite, but may be either. Both are easy to work and slightly water-soluble and they have been used for making a variety of indoor artworks and carvings, as they will not survive long outdoors. Moreover, calcite alabaster, being a carbonate, effervesces when treated with hydrochloric acid, the origin of the word alabaster is in Middle English through Old French alabastre, in turn derived from the Latin alabaster, and that from Greek ἀλάβαστρος or ἀλάβαστος. The Greek words were used to identify a vase made of alabaster and this name may be derived further from the Ancient Egyptian word a-labaste, which refers to vessels of the Egyptian goddess Bast. She was represented as a lioness and frequently depicted as such in figures placed atop these alabaster vessels, other suggestions include derivation from the town of Alabastron in Egypt, described in sometimes contradictory manner by Roman-era authors Pliny and Ptolemy and whose location is not yet known. The purest alabaster is a material of fine uniform grain, but it often is associated with an oxide of iron. The coarser varieties of gypsum alabaster are converted by calcination into plaster of Paris, the softness of alabaster enables it to be carved readily into elaborate forms, but its solubility in water renders it unsuitable for outdoor work. If alabaster with a smooth, polished surface is washed with dishwashing liquid, it will become rough, dull and whiter, losing most of its translucency and lustre. The finer kinds of alabaster are employed largely as a stone, especially for ecclesiastical decoration and for the rails of staircases. Alabaster is mined and then sold in blocks to alabaster workshops, the effect of heating appears to be a partial dehydration of the gypsum. If properly treated, it closely resembles true marble and is known as marmo di Castellina. Alabaster is a stone and can be dyed into any colour or shade

38.
British Museum
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The British Museum is dedicated to human history, art and culture, and is located in the Bloomsbury area of London. The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the physician, the museum first opened to the public on 15 January 1759, in Montagu House, on the site of the current building. Although today principally a museum of art objects and antiquities. Its foundations lie in the will of the Irish-born British physician, on 7 June 1753, King George II gave his formal assent to the Act of Parliament which established the British Museum. They were joined in 1757 by the Old Royal Library, now the Royal manuscripts, together these four foundation collections included many of the most treasured books now in the British Library including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the sole surviving copy of Beowulf. The British Museum was the first of a new kind of museum – national, belonging to neither church nor king, freely open to the public, sloanes collection, while including a vast miscellany of objects, tended to reflect his scientific interests. The addition of the Cotton and Harley manuscripts introduced a literary, the body of trustees decided on a converted 17th-century mansion, Montagu House, as a location for the museum, which it bought from the Montagu family for £20,000. The Trustees rejected Buckingham House, on the now occupied by Buckingham Palace, on the grounds of cost. With the acquisition of Montagu House the first exhibition galleries and reading room for scholars opened on 15 January 1759. During the few years after its foundation the British Museum received several gifts, including the Thomason Collection of Civil War Tracts. A list of donations to the Museum, dated 31 January 1784, in the early 19th century the foundations for the extensive collection of sculpture began to be laid and Greek, Roman and Egyptian artefacts dominated the antiquities displays. Gifts and purchases from Henry Salt, British consul general in Egypt, beginning with the Colossal bust of Ramesses II in 1818, many Greek sculptures followed, notably the first purpose-built exhibition space, the Charles Towneley collection, much of it Roman Sculpture, in 1805. In 1816 these masterpieces of art, were acquired by The British Museum by Act of Parliament. The collections were supplemented by the Bassae frieze from Phigaleia, Greece in 1815, the Ancient Near Eastern collection also had its beginnings in 1825 with the purchase of Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities from the widow of Claudius James Rich. The neoclassical architect, Sir Robert Smirke, was asked to draw up plans for an extension to the Museum. For the reception of the Royal Library, and a Picture Gallery over it, and put forward plans for todays quadrangular building, much of which can be seen today. The dilapidated Old Montagu House was demolished and work on the Kings Library Gallery began in 1823, the extension, the East Wing, was completed by 1831. The Museum became a site as Sir Robert Smirkes grand neo-classical building gradually arose

39.
Neo-Assyrian Empire
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The Neo-Assyrian Empire was an Iron Age Mesopotamian empire, in existence between 911 and 612 BC. The Assyrians perfected early techniques of imperial rule, many of which became standard in later empires, the Neo-Assyrian Empire succeeded the Old Assyrian Empire, and the Middle Assyrian Empire of the Late Bronze Age. During this period, Aramaic was also made a language of the empire. Upon the death of Ashurbanipal in 627 BC, the empire began to due to a brutal. In 616 BC, Cyaxares king of the Medes and Persians made alliances with Nabopolassar ruler of the Babylonians and Chaldeans, Assyria was originally an Akkadian kingdom which evolved in the 25th to 24th centuries BC. The urbanised Akkadian speaking nation of Assyria emerged in the mid 21st century BC, during the 20th century BC, it established colonies in Asia Minor, and under the 20th century BC King Ilushuma, Assyria conducted many successful raids against the states of the south. Ashur-uballit extended Assyrian control over the farming lands of Nineveh. Tiglath-Pileser controlled the caravan routes that crossed the fertile crescent from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Much campaigning by Tiglath-Pileser and succeeding kings was directed against Aramaean pastoralist groups in Syria, by the end of the 2nd millennium BC, the Aramaean expansion had resulted in the loss of much Assyrian territory in Upper Mesopotamia. After the death of Tiglath-Pileser I in 1076 BC, Assyria was in decline for the next 150 years. The period from 1200 BC to 900 BC was an age for the entire Near East, North Africa, Caucasus, Mediterranean and Balkan regions, with great upheavals. Adad-nirari II and his successors campaigned on a basis for part of every year with an exceptionally well-organized army. He subjugated the areas previously under only nominal Assyrian vassalage, conquering and deporting Aramean and Hurrian populations in the north to far-off places. Adadinirari II then twice attacked and defeated Shamash-mudammiq of Babylonia, annexing an area of land north of the Diyala river. He made further gains over Babylonia under Nabu-shuma-ukin I later in his reign and he was succeeded by Tukulti-Ninurta II in 891 BC, who further consolidated Assyrias position and expanded northwards into Asia Minor and the Zagros Mountains during his short reign. The next king, Ashurnasirpal II, embarked on a vast program of expansion, during his rule, Assyria recovered much of the territory that it had lost around 1100 BC at the end of the Middle Assyrian period. Ashurnasirpal II also campaigned in the Zagros Mountains in modern Iran, repressing a revolt against Assyrian rule by the Lullubi, the Assyrians began boasting in their ruthlessness around this time. Ashurnasirpal II also moved his capital to the city of Kalhu, the palaces, temples and other buildings raised by him bear witness to a considerable development of wealth and art

40.
Nebuchadnezzar II
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Nebuchadnezzar II was a Chaldean king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, who reigned c.605 BCE – c.562 BCE. Both the construction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the destruction of Jerusalems temple are ascribed to him and he is featured in the Book of Daniel and is mentioned in several other books of the Bible. The Akkadian name,

41.
Babylonian captivity
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The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile is the period in Jewish history during which a number of Judahites of the ancient Kingdom of Judah were captives in Babylonia. After the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, besieged Jerusalem, the dates, numbers of deportations, and numbers of deportees given in the biblical accounts vary. These deportations are dated to 597 BCE for the first, with others dated at 587/586 BCE, after the fall of Babylon to the Persian king Cyrus the Great in 539 BCE, exiled Judeans were permitted to return to Judah. According to the book of Ezra, construction of the second temple in Jerusalem began around 537 BCE. All these events are considered significant in Jewish history and culture, the return of the exiles was a gradual process rather than a single event, and many of the deportees or their descendants did not return. In the late 7th century BCE, the kingdom of Judah was a client state of the Assyrian empire, in the last decades of the century, Assyria was overthrown by Babylon, an Assyrian province. Egypt, fearing the rise of the Neo-Babylonian empire, seized control of Assyrian territory up to the Euphrates river in Syria. In the process Josiah, the king of Judah, was killed in a battle with the Egyptians at the Battle of Megiddo, after the defeat of Pharaoh Nechos army by the Babylonians at Carchemish in 605 BCE, Jehoiakim began paying tribute to Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. Some of the nobility of Judah were taken to Babylon. In the following years, the court of Jerusalem was divided into two parties, in support of Egypt and Babylon, after Nebuchadnezzar was defeated in battle in 601 BCE by Egypt, Judah revolted against Babylon, culminating in a three-month siege of Jerusalem beginning in late 598 BCE. Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, died during the siege and was succeeded by his son Jehoiachin at the age of eighteen. The city fell on 2 Adar 597 BCE, and Nebuchadnezzar pillaged Jerusalem and its Temple and took Jeconiah, his court, jehoiakims uncle Zedekiah was appointed king in his place, but the exiles in Babylon continued to consider Jeconiah as their Exilarch, or rightful ruler. Despite warnings by Jeremiah and others of the party, Zedekiah revolted against Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar returned, defeated the Egyptians, and again besieged Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the city wall and the Temple, together with the houses of the most important citizens. Zedekiah and his sons were captured, the sons were executed in front of Zedekiah, Judah became a Babylonian province, called Yehud, putting an end to the independent Kingdom of Judah. Some time later, a member of the royal family assassinated Gedaliah and his Babylonian advisors. According to the book of Ezra, the Persian Cyrus the Great ended the exile in 538 BCE, the exile ended with the return under Zerubbabel the Prince and Joshua the Priest and their construction of the Second Temple in the period 521–516 BCE. He appointed there a king of his own choice and taking heavy tribute brought it back to Babylon, one of the tablets refers to food rations for Ya’u-kīnu, king of the land of Yahudu and five royal princes, his sons

42.
Achaemenid Empire
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The Achaemenid Empire, also called the Persian Empire, was an empire based in Western Asia, founded by Cyrus the Great. The empires successes inspired similar systems in later empires and it is noted in Western history as the antagonist of the Greek city-states during the Greco-Persian Wars and for the emancipation of the Jewish exiles in Babylon. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was built in a Hellenistic style in the empire as well. By the 7th century BC, the Persians had settled in the portion of the Iranian Plateau in the region of Persis. From this region, Cyrus the Great advanced to defeat the Medes, Lydia, Alexander, an avid admirer of Cyrus the Great, conquered the empire in its entirety by 330 BC. Upon his death, most of the former territory came under the rule of the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Seleucid Empire. The Persian population of the central plateau reclaimed power by the second century BC under the Parthian Empire, the historical mark of the Achaemenid Empire went far beyond its territorial and military influences and included cultural, social, technological and religious influences as well. Many Athenians adopted Achaemenid customs in their lives in a reciprocal cultural exchange. The impact of Cyruss edict is mentioned in Judeo-Christian texts, the empire also set the tone for the politics, heritage and history of modern Iran. Astronomical year numbering Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details Due to the duration of their reigns, Smerdis, Xerxes II. The Persian nation contains a number of tribes as listed here, the Pasargadae, Maraphii, and Maspii, upon which all the other tribes are dependent. Of these, the Pasargadae are the most distinguished, they contain the clan of the Achaemenids from which spring the Perseid kings. Other tribes are the Panthialaei, Derusiaei, Germanii, all of which are attached to the soil, the Achaemenid Empire was created by nomadic Persians. The Achaemenid Empire was not the first Iranian empire, as by 6th century BC another group of ancient Iranian peoples had established the short lived Median Empire. The Iranian peoples had arrived in the region of what is today Iran c.1000 BC and had for a number of centuries fallen under the domination of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, based in northern Mesopotamia. However, the Medes and Persians, Cimmerians, Persians and Chaldeans played a role in the overthrow of the Assyrian empire. The term Achaemenid means of the family of the Achaemenis/Achaemenes, despite the derivation of the name, Achaemenes was himself a minor seventh-century ruler of the Anshan in southwestern Iran, and a vassal of Assyria. At some point in 550 BC, Cyrus rose in rebellion against the Medes, eventually conquering the Medes and creating the first Persian empire

The Sea Peoples are a purported seafaring confederation that attacked ancient Egypt and other regions of the East …

This famous scene from the north wall of Medinet Habu is often used to illustrate the Egyptian campaign against the Sea Peoples in what has come to be known as the Battle of the Delta. Whilst accompanying hieroglyphs do not name Egypt's enemies, describing them simply as being from "northern countries", early scholars noted the similarities between the hairstyles and accessories worn by the combatants and other reliefs in which such groups are named.

Building Inscription of King Nebuchadnezar II at the Ishtar Gate. An abridged excerpt says: "I (Nebuchadnezzar) laid the foundation of the gates down to the ground water level and had them built out of pure blue stone. Upon the walls in the inner room of the gate are bulls and dragons and thus I magnificently adorned them with luxurious splendour for all mankind to behold in awe."

Detail of a terracotta cylinder of Nebuchadnezzar II, recording the building and reconstruction works at Babylon. 604-562 BCE. From Babylon, Iraq, housed in the British Museum

The Lachish reliefs are a set of Assyrian palace reliefs narrating the story of the Assyrian victory over the kingdom …

The single inscription which identifies the location depicted in the reliefs reads: "Sennacherib, the mighty king, king of the country of Assyria, sitting on the throne of judgment, before (or at the entrance of) the city of Lachish (Lakhisha). I give permission for its slaughter". Identification number: BM 124911

Map of the ancient Near East during the Amarna period, showing the great powers of the period: Egypt (green), Mycenaean Greece (orange), Hatti (yellow), the Kassite kingdom of Babylon (purple), Assyria (grey), and Mitanni (red). Lighter areas show direct control, darker areas represent spheres of influence.